Which vaccine is most effective against Delta?

Which vaccine is the most effective against the Delta variant? The Economist has collected the largest set of vaccine results against the variant and found that vaccines continue to provide significant protection. The two mRNA vaccines, from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNtech, performed best, followed by the AstraZeneca jab.Puerto Rico, an American territory of 3.3m people about 1,000 miles (1,600km) south-east of Florida, is an unexpected success story in the fight against covid-19. How did an impoverished, battered island handle the pandemic better than the rest of America?In Europe, meanwhile, a wave of covid infections is moving through German-speaking countries—an alliance of anti-vaxxers and the far right is largely to blame.Our data team has been looking into how, in Britain, a botched covid test gave false negative results to users and led to thousands of extra cases. A new study has shown that each incorrect result led to 0.6-1.6 subsequent reported infections. Many animals besides humans can catch SARS-CoV-2—mink, white-tailed deer, cats and dogs have all become infected and able to transmit the virus. In our Science section, we examine how animals like these might become viral reservoirs that lie beyond the easy reach of medical science and monitoring. Even if there are no human cases of covid in an area, such animal reservoirs mean that SARS-CoV-2 may still be lurking, waiting to spill back into people. In The World Ahead: 2022, our data correspondent James Fransham discusses The Economist’s “normalcy index” and asks if pre-pandemic behaviour will ever return. Some changes—such as falls in office occupancy and cinema attendance—are here to stay. Our industry editor Simon Wright, meanwhile, predicts that international travel will get easier in 2022, but restrictions will remain. Cross-border travel will probably not recover to pre-covid levels until 2024. By Zanny Minton Beddoes Editor-In-Chief The Economist