A single shot of either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines is more than 80% effective at preventing hospitalisation among the over 80s, the health secretary has said.

Speaking at a Downing Street news conference, Matt Hancock hailed “exciting new data” showing the effectiveness of the two COVID-19 jabs.

According to a pre-print study from Public Health England:

“This shows, in the real world, across the UK right now that the vaccine is helping both to protect the NHS and to save lives,” the health secretary said.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, one of England’s deputy chief medical officers, said the data “gives us those first glimpses of how, if we are patient, and we give this vaccine programme time to have its full effect, it is going to hopefully take us into a very different world in the next few months”.

It comes after six cases of a COVID-19 “variant of concern” from Brazil were detected in the United Kingdom.

Three cases of the P.1 coronavirus variant have been confirmed in England and three in Scotland, Public Health England said.

Two of the cases in England come from a household in South Gloucestershire, where one person returned from Brazil in mid-February, before hotel quarantine measures were introduced.

The third case is unlinked and the whereabouts of the individual unknown, as they did not complete their test registration card.

The three Scottish cases were found in asymptomatic passengers who flew into Aberdeen on the BA1312 flight from London Heathrow on Friday.

They tested positive while self-isolating and contact tracing of other passengers on the flight is currently ongoing.

The Scottish government said there was “no reason to believe” the P.1 variant is in circulation in Scotland.

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