Some COVID vaccines decrease efficacy against new variants — FDA
THE Food and Drug Administration stressed the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines despite reports of low efficacy rates against virus variants
FDA Director General Eric Domingo noted that there is decreasing efficacy as new varius variants emerge, bit the vaccines are still effective.
“There is a decreasing efficacy as we get more mutations pero hindi naman po completely nawawala ang bisa ng bakuna. It’s still a very useful vaccine,” Domingo said
Domingo said data from Pfizer showed that for the Alpha variant, the coronavirus variant first reported in the United Kingdom, the vaccine retained its high efficacy rate of 93%.
For the Delta variant, which was first detected in India, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine’s efficacy rate slightly decreased to 88%.
For AstraZeneca, its efficacy rate against the Alpha variant is at 66%, while its efficacy against the Delta variant is at 60%.
Meanwhile, the FDA chief said studies on the efficacy rate of vaccines from Janssen, Moderna, Sinovac, Sinopharm, and Sputnik V against the Delta variant are still ongoing.
Domingo still urged the public to get vaccinated as this is added protection against the respiratory illness.
“Lahat ng bakunang ito walang nawawalan completely ng bisa even with the Delta variant kaya gusto nating igiit na unang-una… in case may makapasok (na variant), we should all get vaccinated with the vaccines available now because this will still help us stop the spread,” he said.
The Department of Health said 17 cases of the more infectious Delta variant were detected in the country. It is the variant first detected during the deadly wave in India.
