Pfizer jab less effective, still protects against Indian straina

PARIS: The Pfizer vaccine is slightly less effective but appears to still protect against the more transmissible Indian strain of the virus that causes Covid-19, according to a study by France’s Pasteur Institute.

"Despite slightly diminished efficacy, the Pfizer vaccine probably protects" against the Indian variant, according to laboratory test results, said Olivier Schwartz, the institute’s director and co-author of the study that was published on the BioRxiv website ahead of peer review.

The study sampled 28 healthcare workers in the city of Orleans. Sixteen of them had received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, while 12 had received one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

People who had received two doses of Pfizer saw a three-fold reduction in their antibodies against the Indian variant, B.1.617, according to the study, but were still protected.

"The situation was different with the AstraZeneca vaccine, which induced particularly low levels of antibodies neutralising" the Indian variant, the study said.

Patients who had had Covid-19 within the past year and people vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer retained enough antibodies to be protected against the Indian variant, but three to six times less antibodies than against the UK variant, Schwartz said.

The study shows that "this variant.. has acquired partial resistance to antibodies," Schwartz said.

Since first emerging in late 2019 in China, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 has developed several variants, usually named for the places where it first appeared including the so-called South Africa and UK strains.

The variant first detected in India appears to be much more transmissible than earlier variations.

It has now been officially recorded in 53 territories, according to a World Health Organization report.

To try to curb its spread, France and Germany have re-introduced tighter rules on arrivals from affected countries, including the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, more than half of people in their 30s in England have received a coronavirus vaccine dose in a period of little over two weeks, new figures reveal.

NHS England said that, since it began opening up the vaccine rollout to this age group on 13 May, about 53% of those aged 30 to 39 have been given at least one dose.

Overall, more than 32 million people have been vaccinated with a first dose in England, almost three-quarters of the total adult population, while more than 20 million people have had both doses.

People aged 30 to 31 were from Wednesday invited to get their jab, with more than 5m appointments made through the national booking service within 72 hours.

The data comes as the NHS is asking people aged 50 and over, as well as those who are clinically vulnerable, to bring forward their second Covid-19 vaccination to help combat the spread of the B1.617.2 variant first identified in India.

It follows the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommending earlier this month that the second dose interval be shortened from 12 weeks to eight for people in priority cohorts.

NHS England said so far 600,000 people have been invited to rearrange their second jab through the national booking service, with around a quarter moving their appointment earlier.

India has recorded the lowest number of new daily infections in 45 days, the Times of India reports, although a further 173,790 fresh cases were logged in the country on Saturday.

The official death toll climbed to 322,512 as a further 3,617 Covid fatalities recorded on Saturday, according to health ministry data.Daily recoveries continue to outnumber the daily new cases for the 16th consecutive day.

A total of 2,080,048 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Vietnam has discovered a new Covid-19 variant which spreads quickly by air and is a combination of the Indian and British strains, health officials confirmed ON Saturday.

The country is struggling to deal with fresh outbreaks across more than half of its territory, including industrial zones and big cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

More than 6,800 cases including 47 deaths have been reported in Vietnam, with the lion’s share occurring since April.

"We have discovered a new hybrid variant from the Indian and the UK strains," Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long told a national meeting on the pandemic on Saturday, according to state media.

"The characteristic of this strain is that it spreads quickly in the air. The concentration of virus in the throat fluid increases rapidly and spreads very strongly to the surrounding environment."

He did not specify the number of cases recorded with this new variant but said Vietnam will soon announce the discovery in the world’s map of genetic strains.

Vietnam’s Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology said in a statement on Saturday that its scientists had detected gene mutations in four out of 32 patient samples through gene sequencing.

There were seven known coronavirus variants in Vietnam before Long’s announcement, according to the Ministry of Health.