A study conducted by ICMR has found that most COVID-19 positive patients, who had received at least one vaccine dose before catching the infection, were infected by the Delta variant.
The ICMR study is the first such analysis on breakthrough infections post-vaccination. The study shows that most vaccinated individuals were infected by the Delta variant in India.
However, the death rate among vaccinated individuals was found to be very low. The clinical characterization was done on about 677 participants, the study said.
Out of these 677 Covid positive participants, 71 had taken the Covaxin vaccine while the rest 604 had got the Covishield vaccine. Two of the participants had also taken the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.
Three deaths were also reported among the vaccinated individuals.
The ICMR Study Finds the Following:
1. The ICMR study is a clinical characterization and genomic analysis of Covid-19 positive cases who had taken one or two doses of the vaccine before they caught the infection.
2. The overall majority (86.09%) of the breakthrough infections were caused by the Delta variant (B.1.617.2).
3. 9.8% of the positive Covid-19 cases required hospitalization while fatalities were observed in only 0.4% of the cases.
4. The study has suggested that vaccination does provide a reduction in hospital admission and mortality.
5. A total of 677 people had tested positive in the real-time RT-PCR tests done across North, South, West, East, Northeast, and central parts of India. The samples were collected from 17 states and Union Territories. The 17 states are Maharashtra, Kerala, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Manipur, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Pondicherry, New Delhi, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu.
6. A total of 482 cases (71%) were symptomatic with one or more symptoms while 29% had asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection.
7. Fever (69%) was the most consistent symptom followed by body ache, headache and nausea (56%), cough (45%), sore throat (37%), loss of smell and taste (22%), diarrhea (6%), breathlessness (6%) and 1% had ocular irritation and redness.
8. The breakthrough infections post-vaccination were mainly due to the Delta and Kappa variants.
9. 71 (10.5%) were vaccinated with Covaxin, 604 (89.2%) were vaccinated with Covishield, 2 (0.3%) had received the Sinopharm vaccine.
10. While 3 people died (0.4%), hospitalization was required for 67 (9.9%) cases.
