Mix-and-match vaccine schedule highly effective against Covid-19, shows Lancet study in Sweden

People who got a first dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine followed by an mRNA vaccine had a lower risk of contracting Covid-19 than those who got both doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, a study published in medical journal The Lancet showed on Sunday.

Messenger RNA vaccines, or mRNA vaccines, trigger an immune response by helping cells in the human body to make a protein that can offer protection against a pathogen. Pfizer and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines are examples of these.

The study was conducted by Peter Nordstrom and Anna Nordstrom, professors at Sweden’s Umea University, and Marcel Ballin, a doctoral student at the university. It was based on data collected from the Public Health Agency of Sweden and the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare.

The study showed that those who were inoculated with the AstraZeneca vaccine followed by Pfizer had a 67% lower risk of infection than unvaccinated individuals. Those who received a combination of the AstraZeneca vaccine and the Moderna shot had a 79% lower risk of infection.

When these two groups were analysed together, the vaccine schedules had an effectiveness of 68%. In comparison, those who were administered two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines had a 50% lower risk of the coronavirus infection.

The researchers studied…

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