This petition was submitted during the 2019-2024 parliament
Rejected petition Follow recommended dosage guidelines for covid vaccines as per DAUK open letter
The government needs to recommend doses are delivered as manufacturers have tested and specified
More details
The current strategy of delaying second doses runs the risk of leaving people vulnerable to the coronavirus because the research has not tested what happens when the doses are given this far apart.
Protection provided by the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine is considerably lower at 52.4% compared to 95% if 2 doses given 3 weeks apart. The study did not look at how long this initial partial protection from the lst dose lasted if the gap was longer than 3 weeks between each dose.
This petition was rejected
Why was this petition rejected?
It’s about something that the UK Government or Parliament is not directly responsible for.
We can only accept petitions about things the Government or House of Commons are directly responsible for, and decisions about approval of vaccines and the administration of these is a matter for various public health agencies, not the Government or House of Commons.
We have published the following petition calling for a related action, which you might like to sign:
Ban vaccines being administered in a manner not fully tested in clinical trials: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/566116
The delays to receiving the second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine has been implemented by the NHS following advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises UK health departments on immunisation, which has also been supported by the UK's four Chief Medical Officers. Their new advice and the changes to the Covid-19 vaccination programme are consistent with the temporary authorisations granted for these vaccines by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
The JCVI, Chief Medical Officers, MHRA and NHS England are all independent and operationally independent of the UK Government, so we cannot accept petitions calling for actions that these bodies are responsible for.
You can read the JCVI's advice on optimising the COVID-19 vaccination programme for maximum short-term impact here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prioritising-the-first-covid-19-vaccine-dose-jcvi-statement/optimising-the-covid-19-vaccination-programme-for-maximum-short-term-impact
You can read the statement from the UK Chief Medical Officers on the prioritisation of first doses of COVID-19 vaccines here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-from-the-uk-chief-medical-officers-on-the-prioritisation-of-first-doses-of-covid-19-vaccines
You can read the MHRA's conditions of Authorisation for Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approval-of-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-for-covid-19/conditions-of-authorisation-for-pfizerbiontech-covid-19-vaccine
You can read the MHRA's conditions of Authorisation for COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approval-of-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca/conditions-of-authorisation-for-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca
We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.