Two doses of either AstraZeneca or Pfizer coronavirus vaccine are highly effective against the COVID-19 vairant identified in India, said a study. The two doses will provide the same level of protection against the Indian variant as they do against the UK variant.
The study by Public Health England (PHE) claims that the two vaccines are likely to be more effective at preventing hospital admission and deaths due to the deadly COVID-19 infection.
The Pfizer vaccine was found to be 88 per cent effective at stopping the symptomatic disease from the Indian variant two weeks after the second dose, compared with 93 per cent effectiveness against the UK variant.
The AstraZeneca dose was 60 per cent effective against the Indian variant and 66 per cent potent against the UK variant.
The PHE stressed that since AstraZeneca’s second doses were rolled out much later than Pfizer’s, the data shows it takes longer to reach maximum effectiveness with Covishield.
The study looked at data from all age groups from 5 April, to cover the period since the Indian variant emerged.
There is not enough data to estimate how effective the vaccine is against severe outcomes for the Indian variant, PHE said.
Dr Jamie Lopez Bernal, consultant medical epidemiologist at PHE and the study’s lead author, said there was higher confidence in the data from the first vaccine dose than that from the second.
He said: “There are bigger numbers that have been vaccinated with one dose. So I think we classify that as moderate certainty around the first dose, but low levels of confidence around the second dose.”
