The Pfizer and AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines are highly effective against the variant identified in India after two doses, a study has found.
Two jabs of either vaccine give a similar level of protection against symptomatic disease from the Indian variant as they do for the Kent one.
However, both vaccines were only 33 percent effective against the Indian variant three weeks after the first dose. This compared with 50 percent effectiveness against the Kent variant.
Public Health England (PHE), which ran the study, said the vaccines are likely to be even more effective at preventing hospital admission and deaths.
The Pfizer vaccine was found to be 88 percent effective at stopping symptomatic disease from the Indian variant two weeks after the second dose, compared with 93 percent effectiveness against the Kent variant.
The AstraZeneca jab was 60 percent effective against the Indian variant, compared with 66 percent against the Kent variant.
PHE said the difference in effectiveness between the vaccines after two doses might be explained by the fact that rollout of second doses of AstraZeneca was later than for the Pfizer vaccine, which was approved first.
Other data shows it takes longer to reach maximum effectiveness with the AstraZeneca vaccine, PHE said, the BBC News reported.
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