Pfizer claims its Covid-19 vaccine is effective against Delta variant

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine is highly effective against the Delta coronavirus variant, an Israeli Pfizer official said Thursday. First identified in India, the Delta is becoming the dominant coronavirus variant worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (W.H.O.).

“The data we have today, built up from the research we are conducting in the laboratory and including data from these locations where the Delta Indian variant is superseding the British variant as the common one, suggest that our vaccine is very effective, about 90%, in preventing the coronavirus disease, Covid-19,” said Pfizer’s Israel medical director Alon Rappaport.

A Pfizer spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Israel, whose vaccination campaign is one of the most advanced in the world and largely uses the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, does not yet have enough data to shed light on the efficacy of the vaccine against the Delta variant, said Israel Health Ministry’s head of public health Sharon Alroy-Preis.

“We are collecting the data now. We are only now seeing the first cases of the Delta variant in Israel -about 200-, so we will know more soon,” she told reporters on Wednesday.

A study by Public Health England (PHE), where the Delta variant is most widespread, found that Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines offer over 90% protection against hospitalizations from the Delta variant.

In Israel, more than half of its 9.3 million population has now been administered both doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, and a sharp drop in cases has led to the lifting of most economic restrictions.

But confirmed cases have increased in recent days, and health officials have been urging parents to vaccinate their 12 to 15-year-old children, who were granted clearance to be inoculated this month.

Alroy-Preis said that about 65% of the Israeli population is protected from Covid-19, either by vaccination or by having recovered from the disease, a figure she said was still far from providing “herd immunity.”