LONDON—The U.K.’s bold simply call to hold off supplying people a 2nd dose of a Covid-19 vaccine has place it out in entrance in the race to inoculate the world against the ailment.
Guiding that determination: a group of 16 experts who advocated a controversial shift to overrule some vaccine manufacturers’ pointers in buy to get a lot more 1st doses to a lot more people.
The gamble appears to have paid out off, with incoming facts pointing to long lasting protection against slipping unwell just after just one particular vaccine dose. But while some international locations, this sort of as Canada, have adopted the U.K.’s lead, other people such as the U.S. are refusing, declaring to do so could pose a possibility to community well being.
The determination by British authorities holds classes for other international locations as they combat to contain the pandemic. In truth, the dosing discussion raises complicated issues about regardless of whether some governments and their scientific advisers—for occasion in the European Union, in which vaccination campaigns are painfully slow—are getting way too possibility averse.
In December, as a extremely infectious Covid-19 variant ripped throughout the U.K., the group of experts sitting on Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation concluded that delaying a 2nd vaccine dose by up to twelve months could help you save life.
