Mixing Covid vaccines could mean booster jab is not needed, says professor

Mixing vaccines may give such strong protection against Covid-19 — including variants — that a booster jab is not needed in the autumn, a leading medical expert said today.

Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University and a member of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce, stressed that research being led by his colleague Professor Matthew Snape may deliver another breakthrough in the battle against coronavirus.

“The work that Matthew Snape and others are doing in this study to look at comparisons may give us a mix that actually gives us some better immune response that means we are better able to deal with the South Africa variant, the Brazilian variant, and dozens of other variants that are now popping up all over the world,” he told Sky News.

“As you start to mix and match then you will be able to get, I suspect, enhanced levels of immunogenicity and enhanced efficacy but also perhaps a much more durable immune response so that the need for a booster shot for example in the autumn which a lot of people are talking about, may actually not be necessary, if you get the right mixture of vaccines.

“So, it’s a really positive step forward to try and test and evaluate these things but you have to do the science first to measure the immune responses and then we can make some decisions based on that.”

Watch: Should I be worried about the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine?

A major trial in Britain on mixing vaccines between first and second doses has been expanded to include the Moderna and Novavax shots, as well as the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer BioNTech inoculations.

The study involves adults over 50 who will be given different combinations of the vaccines, or the same.

Chief trial investigator Prof Snape, from the Oxford Vaccine Group, is hoping to recruit 1,050 volunteers who have already received one dose in the past eight to 12 weeks.

More than 800 people are already taking part in the study and have had two doses of either Pfizer, AstraZeneca or a mix.

Sir John also stressed that the risks of getting rare blood clots from the AZ jab are hugely less than from Covid itself.

“If you get Covid, you will have a very, very much higher risk of getting a bad clotting problem,” he explained.

“So the clotting problems of the vaccine are pretty trivial compared to the real risks of getting clotting problems if you get Covid.”

He added that there “does not appear to be a signal from a second dose of vaccine” that people may get these extremely rare blood clots.

On the UK’s vaccine roll-out, he stressed: “This has been a really terrific roll-out of the vaccine....it’s been handled with great efficiency by the NHS.

“We should be proud because this is probably the most impressive roll-out of a vaccine in any country in the world.”

Watch: What we know about the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

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