Ross Clark Ross Clark

How are the vaccines affected by the Delta variant?

(Photo: Getty)

Has the emergence of the Delta, or Indian, variant reduced the effectiveness of Covid vaccines and if so by how much? The fear that the Delta variant might be partially escaping our vaccines has often been expressed in recent weeks, especially given that highly-vaccinated countries such as Israel and parts of the US have suffered new peaks of infection since the Delta variant came to dominate. But there has been a lack of real-world data to prove whether or not there is any grounding to these fears.

Today, however, the Oxford University Covid 19 Infection Survey published a study which seeks to answer this question. It compared the results of PCR tests on over 700,000 people, around half of whom were swabbed between December 2020 and May 2021 when the Alpha (Kent) variant was dominant, and half of whom were swabbed between May and August 2021 when the Delta variant was dominant.

The study found that vaccinated people had higher viral loads during the Delta period compared with the earlier Alpha period

The study concludes that yes, there is a drop in effectiveness, but not by all that much. As in trials, Pfizer was found to be initially more effective than AstraZeneca, and its effectiveness against the Delta variant held up slightly better. Among those given the AstraZeneca jab, vaccine effectiveness (the protection against symptomatic infection) fell from 75 to 67 per cent. Among those given Pfizer, effectiveness fell from 94 to 88 per cent. The study also looked at the protective effect over time and concluded that the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine has been falling by 22 per cent per month and the effectiveness of AstraZeneca by 7 per cent per month. Through extrapolation (as opposed to real world data) the team concluded that the effectiveness of Pfizer and AstraZeneca would be similar around four to five months after vaccination.

The study also found that people infected after being inoculated with either vaccine had higher viral loads during the period when the Delta variant was dominant compared with the earlier Alpha period.

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