A real-world study to check the effectiveness of vaccines at Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, has found that both Covishield and Covaxin offer high protection against hospitalisation and infection among healthcare workers.
The study, a pre-print, yet to be peer reviewed, shows vaccines work, and can help break chain of transmission.
The study did not look at a comparative efficacy data from the two vaccines as the number of people who received Covaxin was low.
CMC, Vellore vaccinated 8991 staff (84.8%) between 21st January 2021 and 30th April 2021. A majority 8400 (93.4%) received Covishield, the viral vector Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India, and the remaining received Covaxin, a killed virus vaccine, produced by Bharat Biotech, India.
7,080 health-care workers received two doses. Among them, the vaccines offered 65% protection against infection, 77% protection against hospitalisation, 92% protection against the need for oxygen and 94% protection from ICU admission. Among fully vaccinated HCWs, 679 developed infection 47 days (34- 58) after the second dose.
The good news is, even single dose of vaccines give high protection against both infection and hospitalisation.
The protection among those who needed oxygen care and ICU admission with a single dose was a high 94% and 95%.
Further, among the 1,878 health-care workers who received only one dose, 200 (10.6%) were infected, and 22 (1.2%) needed hospitalisation.
7,080 healthcare workers received both doses. Among them, infection was seen in 679 (9.6%) HCWs and 64 (0.9%) needed to be hospitalised. In further good news, 4 need oxygen support and 2 ICU admission.
Only one HCW died during since the beginning of the pandemic. He had multiple co-morbidities and had not taken the vaccine, says the study.
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