LONDON, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- The coronavirus vaccines being used in Britain could reduce the risk of hospital admission by up to 94 percent four weeks after the first dose, a new study showed Monday.
Four weeks after receiving the first dose, the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine appeared to reduce the risk of hospital admission by 94 percent, according to the study led by Public Health Scotland.
Meanwhile, those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech jab had a reduction in risk of 85 percent between 28 and 34 days after the first dose, the study showed.
Researchers examined data between Dec. 8, 2020 and Feb. 15, 2021 when 1.14 million jabs had been administered and more than one in five (21 percent) Scottish people had received their first dose.
Professor Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, told Sky News that "this research provides encouraging early data on the impact of vaccination on reducing hospitalizations."
The data has been published as a pre-print which means it is early work that has not yet been through peer-review and has not yet been published in a journal.
More than 17.5 million people in Britain have been given the first jab of the coronavirus vaccine, according to latest official figures.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Sunday that the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine appeared to reduce the chances of transmitting coronavirus by "about two thirds".
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged that every adult in Britain will be given a jab of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of July 2021.
The prime minister is set to unveil his "roadmap" exiting the current coronavirus lockdown later on Monday. It is widely expected that schools in England would start to reopen on March 8.
England is currently under the third national lockdown since outbreak of the pandemic in the country. Similar restriction measures are also in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Johnson has said he would take a "prudent" approach to lift the lockdown to ensure the process is "irreversible".
To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines. Enditem