Study Says Two Doses Of AstraZeneca And Pfizer Vaccines Are Effective Against COVID-19 Delta Variant
JAKARTA - Two doses of Pfizer's or AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine are said to be nearly as effective against the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 as it was against the previously dominant Alpha variant.
This As revealed by a study published on Wednesday, July 21, while still underlining, one dose of vaccine injection is not enough for high protection from infection.
The study, published in the 'New England Journal of Medicine', UK confirms key findings produced by Public Health England (PHE) in May on the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca based on real data in the field.
In the presentation of the results of the study last Wednesday, two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were up to 88 percent effective at preventing the symptomatic disease from the Delta variant, compared with 93.7 percent for the Alpha variant, generally, the same as previously reported.
Meanwhile, two injections of AstraZeneca's vaccine were up to 67 percent effective against the Delta variant, up from the 60 percent originally reported, and 74.5 percent effective against the Alpha variant, compared with initial estimates of the effectiveness of around 66 percent.
"Only a small difference in vaccine effectiveness was noted with the Delta variant, compared with the Alpha variant after receiving two doses of the vaccine," the Public Health England researchers wrote in the study.
Data from Israel estimate the lower effectiveness of Pfizer injections against symptomatic disease, although protection against the severe disease remains high.
PHE previously said that the first dose of the two COVID-19 vaccines had an effectiveness of up to 33 percent against symptomatic disease from the Delta variant.
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The full study published on Wednesday also found that a single dose of Pfizer injection was only 36 percent effective, while a single dose of AstraZeneca vaccine was about 30 percent effective.
"Our finding of decreased effectiveness after the first dose will support efforts to maximize uptake of the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine among susceptible groups in the context of circulating Delta variants," said the study authors.