Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the Pfizer BioNTech covid-19 vaccine when there is a 12-week gap between the first and second dose for those aged over 80; and what evidence that assessment is based on.

Public Health England is monitoring the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines and has published early evidence on the efficacy of both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccines. The evidence suggests that a single dose of either vaccine is around 60 to 70% effective at preventing symptomatic disease in older adults and around 80% effective at preventing hospitalisations. There is also evidence that a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is around 85% effective at preventing deaths. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.01.21252652v1

Effectiveness of two doses with a 12-week gap will be monitored as more individuals start to receive their second dose.