Even single doses of Covid-19 vaccines provided recipients significant protection against death during the country’s second wave of the pandemic, a top health official said on Friday, citing a Tamil Nadu study that underlines the need to rapidly expand coverage amid limited supplies.
The study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has found that a single dose of the Covid-19 vaccine provided recipients 82 per cent protection from death, while two doses increased vaccine effectiveness to 95 per cent.
“Here is real-life data, not research data. Real-life data from the second wave that was driven by the Delta variant. The effectiveness (of vaccines) to prevent death is huge,” said Vinod Paul, the chair of the national expert group guiding the Centre’s vaccination policy.
Public health experts have listed the Delta variant of coronavirus — first detected in India — among key factors that contributed to the speed and size of the second wave of the pandemic in which daily new infections rose 46-fold from 9,000 in mid-February to over 414,000 in early May.
The study that counted coronavirus deaths among Tamil Nadu police staff is the third large assessment of vaccine effectiveness in India after similar comparisons of Covid-19 outcomes among healthcare workers at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, and among police personnel in Punjab.
The ICMR’s National Institute of Epidemiology, Chennai, recorded 20 deaths (1.17 per 1,000) among 17,059 unvaccinated staff, seven deaths (0.21 per 1,000) among 32,792 who had received one dose, and four deaths (0.06 per 1,000) among 67,673 who had received both doses.
Those numbers translate into 82 per cent vaccine effectiveness after one dose and 95 per cent after two doses.
The findings point to potential gains — or lives saved — if more people were vaccinated, but the country’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign, constrained by slow supplies, is progressing at a pace much slower than what it could be.
The campaign has administered nearly 400 million doses, but only 79 million people — eight per cent of the 944 million eligible — have been fully vaccinated with two doses. India is currently administering four million doses daily instead of more than eight million needed to complete vaccinations by the year-end.
Health officials have expressed hope that rigorous adherence to Covid-linked precautions — such as wearing masks and avoiding crowds — by people across the country as well as a gradual increase in vaccination coverage might avert a possible third wave.
India’s daily new Covid-19 cases have declined steadily over the past eight weeks to around 40,000.
However, pockets of widespread infections, where 10 per cent or larger suspected cases tested are found positive, persist, which include nine districts in Manipur, eight in Kerala, six in Rajasthan, five each in Meghalaya and Mizoram, three each in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Sikkim, two in Tripura, and one each in Assam, Maharashtra, and Puducherry.
