Two doses of Covishield and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines against COVID-19 may have 90% effectiveness at preventing deaths due to the Delta variant of the coronavirus, suggests a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study obtained data from the Scotland-wide EAVE II COVID-19 surveillance platform. Investigators from Universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde and Public Health Scotland looked into the data acquired from 5.4 million individuals in Scotland from April 1 through September 27, 2021. A total of 115,000 individuals tested positive for COVID-19 during this duration via PCR tests conducted in the community. A total of 201 deaths were reported related to COVID-19.

The Pfizer vaccine was found to be 90% effective while the AstraZeneca vaccine, called Covishield in our country, appeared to be 91% effective at preventing deaths in individuals who had received two vaccine doses, but had tested COVID-positive in the community.

Death due to COVID-19 was defined as anyone dying within 28 days of a positive PCR test, or COVID-19 reported as a cause of death on the death certificate.

The researchers said that the study should be repeated in other countries and settings and with a longer follow-up duration after full vaccination. They also stated that owing to the observational nature of their study, vaccine effectiveness data must be cautiously interpreted and that a direct comparison between both the vaccines cannot be made.

Source: ET Healthworld