Reports suggest Pfizer and Astrazeneca 88% effective against Indian COVID variant

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines have been found to be very effective against the coronavirus variant first identified in India, according to a study by Public Health England (PHE).

The Pfizer vaccine was 88 percent effective and the AstraZeneca insert was 60 percent effective against the B1617.2 strain after the second dose.

Both vaccines were more effective against the so-called “Kent” strain – B.1.1.7, the COVID-19 variant in Britain – with Pfizer 93 percent effective, while the AstraZeneca sting was 66 percent effective period.

However, they were only 33 percent effective three weeks after the first dose.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock described the result as ‘groundbreaking’, while PHE said it expected to see even higher levels of efficacy against hospitalization and death.

“This new evidence is groundbreaking and proves how valuable our COVID-19 vaccination program is in protecting the people we love,” Hancock said.

The study, which took place between April 5 and May 16, found that both vaccines were 33 percent effective after the first dose, 33 percent effective against symptomatic diseases of the B1617.2 strain, compared with about 50 percent against the B.1.1 . 7 voltage.

About 12,675 genome-consecutive cases were included in the analysis, but only 1,054 were of the variant identified in India. The study contains data for all age groups from 5 April to cover the period since the origin of the tribe.

New data from PHE show that from 1 February this year to 18 May, at least 2889 cases of the B1617.2 strain were recorded in England.

Of these, 104 cases resulted in a visit to an emergency department, 31 required overnight hospitalization and six resulted in a death.

According to the data, the B.1.1.7 variant is the most common strain in England, with 132,082 cases recorded during the same period. The virus has infected 4.46 million people and caused the death of 128,000 people in the UK since its outbreak last year.