Odisha reported its first Delta Plus variant of SARS-COV-2 from Deogarh district on Friday.
“Contact tracing of the infected person will be carried out diligently,” said C.B.K. Mohanty, Director of Medical Education and Training, Odisha.
He said if required micro containment as a strategy would be adopted to prevent further spread of the highly transmissible variant. “If people follow COVID-19 appropriate behaviour, we will be able to break the chain of transmission,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Regional Medical Research Centre, Bhubaneswar, an Indian Council of Medical Research institute, has examined 274 persons infected with COVID-19 two weeks after receiving two doses of the vaccines.
From March 1 to June 10, nasopharyngeal swab and serum samples of vaccinated individuals were collected from various healthcare facilities in Odisha and sent to RMRC for testing. Individuals who tested positive in RT-PCR test 14 days after taking both doses of either Covaxin or Covishield were considered as breakthrough cases and included in the study.
A total of 361 samples of vaccinated individuals were referred to RMRC for confirmation of infection and quantitative antibody estimation. All the 361 were found to be positive in RT-PCR test, but 87 were excluded as they were either not fully vaccinated or had not completed 14 days after the second dose.
“Out of the 274 samples with confirmed breakthrough infection, 35 (12.8%) had received Covaxin and 239 (87.2%) received Covishield. The median age for breakthrough infection among referred cases was 47 years with a significantly older age group,” says RMRC in its report.
It says around 43% of the Covaxin recipients with breakthrough infection and reported to the facility were healthcare workers, whereas it was around 10% among Covishield recipients.
“About 83.2% of individuals were found to be symptomatic in nature, which was almost similar in both the vaccine groups. Around 9.9% of the individuals were hospitalised with no significant difference between Covaxin and Covishield recipient groups,” RMRC report points out.
Only one individual (Covishield recipient) died post infection during the study period.
