Research published in The Lancet suggests that vaccine protection against the Delta variant first identified in India may be lower than against the Alpha variant first identified in the UK.
Delta coronavirus variant doubles risk of hospitalization compared to previously dominant variant in UK, but two doses of vaccine still offer strong protection, Scott says study found.
The study indicated that early evidence suggested that vaccine protection against the Delta variant, first identified in India, may be lower than against the Alpha variant, first identified in Kent, in the south. -est of England.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to delay ending COVID-19 restrictions in England on Monday, following a rapid increase in cases of the Delta variant, which is also more transmissible than the Alpha variant.
The study, published in a research letter in The Lancet on Monday, looked at 19,543 community cases and 377 hospitalizations among 5.4 million people in Scotland, of which 7,723 cases and 1,234 hospitalizations were found to have the Delta variant.
Chris Robertson, professor of public health epidemiology at the University of Strathclyde, said that taking age and co-morbidities into account, the Delta variant roughly doubled the risk of hospitalization, but vaccines reduced always this risk.
“If your test is positive, then two doses of the vaccine or one dose for 28 days roughly reduces your risk of being admitted to the hospital by 70%,” he told reporters.
Two weeks after the second dose, Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine was shown to have 79% protection against infection with the Delta variant, compared to 92% against the Alpha variant.
For the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, there was 60% protection against Delta compared to 73% for Alpha.
“The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was shown to be less effective than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection in people with the Delta variant of concern,” the authors wrote in the Lancet article.
However, they added, “Given the observational nature of these data, estimates of vaccine efficacy should be interpreted with caution. “
Facilitate locking
Scientists said two doses of the vaccine offered much better protection than a dose against the Delta variant, and a delay in easing the lockdown in England would help more people get a second dose and boost their responses. immune.
“I think any sort of increase in the window of opportunity before the lockdown measures are fully ended will be helpful,” said Aziz Sheikh, director of the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh.
Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said this weekend that the government wanted to use the overtime to overtake millions of young people.
He said that even though the vaccines had weakened the link between infections and hospital admissions, they wanted to be sure it was “cut and broken.”
The cautious approach was, he said, necessary to ensure that the unlock was “irreversible” and that they did not have to “yo-yo in and out of the measures.”
The latest daily government figures on Monday showed a further rise in infections with a further 7,742 laboratory-confirmed cases in the UK.
