OREANDA-NEWS. The vaccination against the disease COVID-19, caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, significantly reduces the risk of hospitalization. This is the results of a study of several universities in Scotland, published on Monday, February 22.

Thus, the first dose of the vaccine, developed by the German company «BioNTech» together with the American «Pfizer», reduces the risk of hospitalization by up to 85% by the fourth week after vaccination. And the drug from the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company «AstraZeneca» and the University of Oxford – by 94%, experts said.

Such a result gives a good reason to be optimistic about the future, said the head of the research, Aziz Sheikh. He called for speeding up the vaccination campaign around the world.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been detected in more than 112 million people on the planet, almost 2.5 million patients with COVID-19 have died, and about 88 million have recovered. The most confirmed infections (more than 28 million) and deaths (more than 500 thousand) occur in the United States. In the 67-million-strong United Kingdom, the virus has been detected in more than 4.1 million people, about 121,000 have died.