針對Delta病毒的防護效力 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- How effective are the vaccines against the Delta variant compared with the Alpha variant? In general, Covid jabs are most effective against the most severe outcomes, such as death, and less effective against less severe ones, such as asymptomatic infection.
This appears to be borne out by data collected for the two main Covid jabs in use in the UK against both variants.
According to figures gathered by Public Health Scotland and published in the Lancet, at least two weeks after the second dose of Covid jabs, protection against infection fell from 92% for the Alpha variant to 79% against the Delta variant for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, while for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine the protection fell from 73% to 60% respectively.
Protection against symptomatic disease has also been found to differ depending on the variant.
According to the latest figures from Public Health England (PHE), four weeks after one dose, either vaccine offered almost 50% protection against the Alpha variant. However for the Delta variant this protection was lower, with one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab offering about 36% protection against symptomatic disease. For one dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine this figure was about 30%.
Two weeks after the second dose, the differences in vaccine effectiveness by variant were more modest, with the Pfizer/BioNTech jab offering 88% protection against symptomatic disease with the Delta variant, compared with 94% protection against the Alpha variant. For the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, the figures were 67% and 74% respectively.
PHE has previously noted there may be a number of reasons why the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has lower figures for either variant, including that it takes longer to reach maximum effectiveness.