World Health Organization listed AstraZeneca - Oxford University's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use

A three month gap between doses of the Oxford/AstrZeneca coronavirus vaccine results in a higher efficacy than a six-week gap, a study has found.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, he said that Pakistan will receive 2.8 million doses of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine on March 2 as the first batch of a donation from the global COVAX programme. For this reason, a second dose of vaccine is still recommended.

Simon Stevens, chief executive of the National Health Service in England, on Monday said this hesitancy was a "real concern" and that a huge effort was being made to overcome it.

Scientists are urging people to have two doses of the vaccine to increase its protection levels. While specific transmission studies were not included in our analysis, United Kingdom trial participants were tested for Covid-19 each week regardless of symptoms, and we combined this with other positive Covid-19 cases in the trial to help determine the overall impact of the vaccine on risk of infection.

In a statement retweeted by Health Minister Jens Spahn, the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) said the vaccine "prevents COVID-19 disease in the majority of cases or alleviates symptoms when disease occurs".

"All those things matter, and those are things that we have to do better at", he told the BBC.

Dr Sultan said that while the process of vaccination could not be started in 110 countries, Pakistan was among those 65 countries where vaccination has begun.

He said he thought the current lockdown should be lifted in stages, adding:"I am encouraged by the cautious approach being taken, an incremental approach which I think will be adopted, namely relax one thing and see what the impact is, relax again".

The EU is far behind the UK and the United States in getting its population of 450 million vaccinated against coronavirus.

The authors note this regimen may be beneficial while vaccine supplies are initially limited.