Both doses of vaccines needed to be highly effective against variant found in India.

The Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against the variant first found in India, but only if you get both doses, real-world data shows Two shots of Pfizer's vaccine were 88% effective against the variant first identified in India, and one shot was 33% effective, real-world data found. Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce YahooNews

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford University-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines are highly effective against the variant first found in India, which is thought to have fueled record-breaking infection numbers in the country and overwhelmed its healthcare system, new real-world data indicates.

The UK study, from England's public-health authority, found that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were 88% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 caused by the variant, which is called B.1.617.2. Two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine were 60% effective, the study found.

The UK has reported more than 4,000 cases of the variant, which has now spread to 49 countries including the US, according to Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data. B.1.1.7, a variant first identified in the UK, remains the most common variant both there and in the US.

One dose offered far less protection, the Public Health England study found. A single dose of either vaccine was 33% effective against COVID-19 with symptoms caused by B.1.617.2.

The study, which was posted as a preprint Saturday and is yet to be peer-reviewed by other experts, is the first in the world to indicate that vaccines offer protection against B.1.617.2, which has mutations that make it highly infectious and might also make it able to escape antibodies produced by vaccines.

For comparison, two doses of Pfizer's vaccine were 93% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 caused by B.1.1.7, and AstraZeneca's was 66% effective. After one dose, both vaccines were 50% effective against B.1.1.7, the data indicated.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Sunday in a press release that the findings were "groundbreaking" and showed the importance of getting a second dose to secure the "strongest possible protection" against coronavirus variants. ...