UK advisers cautious about how much covid-19 vaccines cut transmission

By Adam Vaughan

The UK government’s chief scientific adviser has urged extreme caution about reading too much into preliminary data from Israel on the extent to which covid-19 vaccines reduce transmission of the coronavirus.

Patrick Vallance said that while early Israeli data showed up to a 60 per cent drop in the spread of infections after people had been given Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine, more research is needed. “I think we’ve got to be extremely cautious and wait until we’ve got proper data,” he told New Scientist at a Downing Street briefing on 27 January.

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