COVID-19 | DATA VISUALISATION
Trust the Vaccines: COVID-19 vaccines effective even on Delta
R Plotly data visualisation of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (death rate and hospitalisation rate), including against the Delta variant.
Do the vaccines work? UK’s population received the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. Have they shown any significant effectiveness before reaching the herd immunity level of 80%?
At Least One Dose
On June 9, 2021, UK surpassed 60% of its population vaccinated with at least one dose of a vaccine.
Full vaccination
Also, on June 4, 2021, 40% of the UK’s population have been fully vaccinated.
New cases
First lockdown was July 4 — August 3, 2020, second lockdown was December 2–15, 2020, and third lockdown was January 6 — March 8, 2021. As the third lockdown restrictions have been eased over 4 stages, new cases rise again despite the vaccinated proportions achieved.
The Delta
Cases of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK rose by 54,268 in the week ending on June 30, 2021, to a total of 216,249, new data showed. The Delta became significant in the UK from April 5, 2021, and is estimated to be 40–60% more transmissible than the Alpha variant.
In the graph above, during predominance of the Alpha, new cases peaked at 1004.5 per million on January 8, 2021. The vaccination in the UK had only just started then. In contrast, in the current predominance of the Delta, new cases only reached 798.1 per million (July 17). This represents only approximately 80% of the corresponding Alpha’s peak — note that the 60% first dose, 40% full dose thresholds were reached one month earlier.
In fact, during the predominance of the Alpha variant, hospital admission peaked at 424.3 per million in the week ending January 10, 2021 ( NB start of vaccination). In the current Delta predominance, peak hospital admission only touched 92.9 per million in the week ending July 25 — only approximately 22% that of Alpha.
Case Hospitalisation Rate
Since June 6, 2021, hospitalisations have gone down towards very low levels, circa 2.55% of cases.
Case Fatality Rate
Also, on June 9, 2021, the case fatality rate has gone down to 0.08%.
Conclusion
The vaccines have effectively reduced two crucial clinical parameters: deaths and hospitalisations due to COVID-19 in the UK, even amidst the predominant and rising proportion of the circulating Delta variant. This effectiveness occurs early at 60% of the population having received at least one dose and 40% fully vaccinated.
Source of data
Hannah Ritchie, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Diana Beltekian, Edouard Mathieu, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, Charlie Giattino, Cameron Appel, Lucas Rodés-Guirao and Max Roser (2020) — “Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus' [Online Resource]
References
Definition of waves of COVID-19 by the Office of National Statistics
