Fact check on vaccine effectiveness against variants

 Link here.

"Studies have found the vaccines 'work very well' against the B.1.1.7 variant, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, told us. 'More worrisome,' he said, are the other variants of concern, but even then, the vaccines, as well as natural immunity, protect against 'severe, critical disease,' and 'mild, moderate disease, but not as well.'"

"Several studies have suggested COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against the B.1.1.7 variant. [...] Those findings were echoed by another study in Israel, published May 5 in The Lancet, that looked at data from Jan. 24 to April 3 and estimated the Pfizer vaccine effectiveness, seven days after the second dose, was 95.3% against infection and 91.5% against asymptomatic infection. The study estimated that 94.5% of infections were of the B.1.1.7 variant.

"In Qatar, researchers used national databases on vaccinations, testing and clinical characteristics, and a study design that controlled for bias in whether people sought health care. Viral genome sequencing showed that half of COVID-19 cases in Qatar from Feb. 23 to March 18 were caused by the B.1.351 variant and nearly the other half by B.1.1.7. The researchers estimated the Pfizer vaccine effectiveness, two weeks or more after the second dose, against any infection of the B.1.1.7 variant at 89.5% and of the B.1.351 variant at 75%. Effectiveness against severe, critical or fatal disease from any variant was an estimated 97.4%."