Three Covid vaccines give ‘substantial’ extra protection against serious illness compared to two doses

Three jabs are better than two, according to a new study which finds that people are better protected against Covid after their booster than they are after their second dose. Researchers compared the protection conferred by second and third Pfizer jabs and found the boost gave a better defence against both infection and serious illness. Three doses gave 88 per cent protection against any kind of infection, from asymptomatic to very serious, rising to 97 per cent defence against hospitalisation during the first 3 months after vaccination. But unlike nine months ago, when the Delta variant was spreading through a mostly unvaccinated population, now millions of factory workers have been fully vaccinated and the Omicron variant is proving less severe, the government said. 'The risk of widespread lockdowns is very low this year as Vietnam has successfully carried out its COVID-19 vaccination campaign,' Dang Duc Anh, director of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, told Reuters.