April 23, 2021

Infection Survey data on infections and antibodies after one dose of either AZ or Pfizer vaccine, and after two doses of Pfizer

Data from the COVID-19 Infection Survey (run by the University of Oxford and the ONS) has looked at the impact of vaccination on new infections in adults in England and Wales by analysing 1,610,562 test results from nose and throat swabs taken from 373,402 study participants between 1 December 2020 and 3 April.

The University of Oxford have released two preprints from this dataset.  The first looks at rates of new infections (both symptomatic and asymptomatic) 21 days after one dose of either the Pfizer or Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, or after two doses of the Pfizer vaccine.  The second looks at antibody levels in people who have had either one dose of Pfizer or Oxford AstraZeneca, and after two doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

Journalists dialled in to this briefing to hear from the scientists who have done this research about this data, and to ask them their questions.

Please note this data is in the form of preprints, so it is early work that has not yet been through peer-review and is not published in a journal.

Speakers included:

Prof Sarah Walker, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, and Chief Investigator and Academic Lead for the National COVID-19 Infection Survey

Prof David Eyre, Associate Professor at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford

Dr Koen Pouwels, Senior Researcher at the Nuffield Dept of Population Health, University of Oxford