Covishield Jab Protection Against COVID-19 Wanes Just After 3 Months: Lancet Study

The protection against the novel coronavirus offered by the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine Covishield declines just after three months of receiving two jabs, as per a study released in the journal The Lancet.

As per the findings, the booster programs are a must to maintain and provide absolute protection from severe disease, stated a team of researchers led by the University of Edinburgh.

A Concerning Discovery

The scientists from Brazil and Scotland scrutinised the information for two million individuals in Scotland and nearly 42 million people in Brazil who had received the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine which specifically uses an adenovirus, which is a common cold virus from chimpanzees, to assist the immune system to fight viruses.

In Scotland, two weeks after receiving the second jab, the researchers found that there was nearly a five-fold increase in the percentage of dying or being hospitalised due to COVID-119 approximately five months after the double vaccination shots.

The significant downfall in effectiveness starts to appear first at around the three-month period when the probability of death and hospitalisation gets to double that of two weeks after getting the second dose, the experts were quoted as saying by a Deccan Herald report. Furthermore, the risk further increases by three-fold after just four months of being jabbed with the second vaccine dose. The study also recorded similar data in Brazil as well.

"Vaccines have been a key tool in fighting the pandemic, but waning in their effectiveness has been a concern for a while. By identifying when waning first starts to occur in the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, it should be possible for governments to design booster programmes that can ensure maximum protection is maintained," Director of the University of Edinburgh Professor Aziz Sheikh said.

Booster Doses Are 'Must'

He also added that if there is an option for a booster dose and one has not yet had one, it would highly recommend that they book one as soon as possible.

The above-mentioned research work also estimated the COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness at alike fortnightly intervals by analysing outcomes of individuals who have already been jabbed with those ones who are unvaccinated.

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