Pfizer vaccine is 88% effective against B1.617.2: Study Infected people with even 1 shot of vaccine don’t need hospitals: Expert New Delhi: A study by Public Health England shows for the first time that two doses of the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against the B.1.617.2 variant first identified in India. According to Public Health England (PHE), while the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was 88 per cent effective against symptomatic COVID-19 from the B1.617.2 variant of concern (VOC) two weeks after the second dose, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was 60 per cent effective against the symptomatic disease caused by the B1.617.2 VOC. However, the effectiveness from both types of vaccines was found to be only 33 per cent against the VOC found in India after just one dose of either jab.