UK Covid live news: vaccines do better than expected at cutting transmission, study shows

Latest updates: jabs do not just reduce severity of illness but also decrease virus transmission more than expected

Good morning. Boris Johnson faces a difficult PMQs later - as Aubrey Allegrett and Jessica Elgot report in their overnight story, pressure is growing for him to offer a proper account of the funding of his Downing Street flat - but there is also a fair amount of coronavirus news around today. The science committee is taking evidence this morning, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is giving a press conference this afternoon, and overnight Public Health England has published new research on the impact of vaccines on household transmission.

Here is an extract from the PHE news release.

This new research shows that those who do become infected 3 weeks after receiving one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca vaccine were between 38 and 49% less likely to pass the virus on to their household contacts than those who were unvaccinated.

Protection was seen from around 14 days after vaccination, with similar levels of protection regardless of age of cases or contacts.

It’s very, very reassuring, and it is certainly better than many of us expected just a few months ago. Many of us thought that vaccines were going to be very good at preventing the more serious complications of infection, because they induce antibody, but we weren’t at all sure that it was going to actually stop the virus from transmitting by getting into the moist surfaces in your nose and your throat. And it does seem that these vaccines are remarkably effective, even after a first dose.

This is terrific news – we already know vaccines save lives and this study is the most comprehensive real-world data showing they also cut transmission of this deadly virus.

Related: Coronavirus live news: India deaths pass 200,000; crisis needs global response – Fauci

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Coronavirus | The Guardian

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