The COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca/Oxford University are "highly effective" against the Indian variant, a new study has found.
Public Health England (PHE) said on Sunday that the Pfizer vaccine was 88 per cent effective against symptomatic disease from the Indian variant — named B.1.617.2 — two weeks after the second dose.
The AstraZeneca jab had an efficacy rate of 60 per cent.
Both of these rates are on par with the protection the vaccines offer against the British variant, known as B.1.1.7, PHE said.It said the difference in effectiveness between the two jabs "may be explained by the fact that the rollout of the second doses of AstraZeneca was later than for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and other data on antibodies profiles show it takes longer to reach maximum effectiveness with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
