Even with Alpha variant the ability to prevent transmission was limited. The early data showed very plainly to anyone paying attention that the vaccines simply couldn't hold up the ability to prevent transmission but the official messaging and using it as the basis for making vaccines mandatory continued until it was undeniable. There was a lot of talk about how it reduced the infectious period but not a lot of talk that it didn't significantly reduce peak infectivity and that reduction came from the periods at the start and end of the infectious period where the lesser number of infection events were distributed.
A short term affect which the vaccines were unable to sustain longer term irrespective of variant.
Distancing, masks and sanitisation had a huge impact as well as reduced activity - we had no outbreaks at work, despite some people picking up colds and even COVID outside of work and coming in while infectious, for ~2 years until we dropped measures, then it was like flicking a switch - one person would come in with a cold or COVID and before you knew it half the staff had it.
I'm kind of annoyed work has stopped bothering with the supply of industrial anti-bacterial/viral wipes and the regime for using them as they undeniably had a huge impact, not just the impact of background levels, on preventing stuff going around in general.