Everything Professor Van-Tam said about the coronavirus vaccine ‘breakthrough’

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam hailed today’s news of the ’90 per cent effective’ Pfizer coronavirus vaccine as a “very important scientific breakthrough”.

The deputy chief medical officer for England said he is “hopeful” for it to be rolled out by Christmas, however he also cast doubts on when life can get back to normal in the UK.

Speaking at a Downing Street press conference on Monday, Prof Van-Tam said the Covid vaccine won’t make any difference to the current wave but may prevent a future wave in the spring.

The UK has secured 30 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine called BNT162b2 – the first agreement the firms signed with any government.

Results from the interim analysis of Phase 3 of the study show it is more than than 90 per cent effective in preventing Covid-19 among those without evidence of prior infection.

However it is thought people will need two doses, meaning not enough shots have been secured for the entire UK population.

According to the report, no serious safety concerns have been observed, but it adds that safety and additional efficacy data continue to be collected.

Before thanking clinical trial volunteers and “unsung scientists” working around the clock, Prof Van-Tam said it’s important to not get “too excited” at this stage as “safety is more important than vaccine effectiveness”.

Once authorised for use in the UK, an independent body will advise the government on who should be prioritised. Prof Van-Tam says it is “already clear that age is the biggest priority”.

The chief medical officer said the current vaccine targets the S protein of coronavirus and that scientists did not know if it was possible to prevent the disease.

Describing the announcement as a “huge milestone”, he said it was good news for other future vaccines.

Prof Van-Tam said: “So this is like… getting to the end of the playoff final, it’s gone to penalties, the first player goes up and scores goal.

“You haven’t won the cup yet, but what it does is it tells you that the goalkeeper can be beaten.”

But he said “we don’t yet know” when life can get back to normal or when coronavirus restrictions can start to be lifted.

“Frankly, we’re in the middle of the second wave, and I don’t see the vaccine making any difference for the wave we are now in,” he said.

Prof Van-Tam then suggested a “much better horizon” could come by the end of spring.

“I’m hopeful that it may prevent future waves, but this one we have to battle through to the end without a vaccine,” he said.

“We might be able to look toward the end of spring for a much better horizon than what we have in front of us right now. Please stick with us for now.

“Please don’t relax. Much depends on the extent to which you continue to follow the rules, not only through the current lockdown period, but afterwards when we hope to return to a time of slightly lower restrictions.

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“It would be a colossal mistake on the part of any one of us to relax at this point.”

Furthermore, the deputy chief medical officer said it was not known whether the vaccine would prevent transmission of coronavirus.

He told the conference that “the one thing we know about these vaccines at the moment is that they will prevent illness” from Covid-19 as diagnosed by a PCR test.

“We do not know yet if these vaccines will prevent asymptomatic infection.

“And therefore we do not know if these vaccines will prevent virus shedding, and therefore have an effect on community transmission.”

He said that more work was needed to know whether vaccines only “modify disease” or whether they can also prevent transmission.