Study suggests vaccine protection wanes after 6 months
The protection provided by two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines starts to wane within six months, new research suggests.
A reasonable worst-case scenario could see protection fall to below 50% for the elderly and healthcare workers by winter, an expert has said.
The Pfizer jab was 88% effective at preventing Covid-19 infection a month after the second dose.
But after five to six months the protection decreased to 74%, suggesting protection fell 14 percentage points in four months, latest analysis from the Zoe Covid study indicates.
With the AstraZeneca vaccine, there was a protection against infection of 77% one month after the second dose.
After four to five months protection decreased to 67%, suggesting protection fell by 10 percentage points over three months.
The study drew on more than 1.2 million test results and participants.
Al Capone’s guns among items to be auctioned by granddaughters
Guns once owned by Al Capone, one of the most notorious gangsters in US history, are to go under the hammer at a California auction.
The mobster’s favoured .45 automatic pistol is among the haul, which also includes vintage photos, a letter to his son written from Alcatraz, and the bed he shared with his wife at their luxury Florida mansion.
The 174 items on sale in October are a collection entitled “A Century of Notoriety: the Estate of Al Capone,” in what auctioneers say “will no doubt go down as one of the most important celebrity auctions in history”.
Capone was one of the most feared figures in organised crime during the Prohibition Era, when the sale or production of alcohol was banned in the US.
He was the boss of the Chicago Outfit, a 1920s gang that overpowered rivals in bootlegging and racketeering with increasingly brutal methods.
Capone was never convicted of any violent crime, but jailed for tax evasion, ultimately ending up at Alcatraz, an island fortress off San Francisco.
NI scientist awarded Royal Society’s highest prize
A leading astrophysicist from Northern Ireland has been awarded the world’s oldest scientific prize for her work on the discovery of pulsars, the BBC reports.
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is only the second woman to be awarded the Royal Society’s highest prize, the Copley Medal.
The medal is awarded for outstanding achievements in scientific research.
In 1967, when she was a 24-year-old student, she was part of a team that discovered the new type of star.
Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, so named because they appear to pulsate when viewed from Earth.
At the time she was overlooked for a Nobel prize in favour of her male collaborators, although she has argued the prize was awarded appropriately at the time due to her student status.
