FILE PHOTO: Navi Mumbai: An NMMC Health Department employee administers COVID-19 vaccine dose to a passenger inside a NMMT bus, at Vashi, in Navi Mumbai, Tuesday, Feb 8, 2022. (PTI Photo)
New Delhi, April 26 (PTI): Seventy per cent of the people who received a booster dose of the Covid vaccine did not contract the disease during the third wave, according to a new study that covered nearly 6,000 people in India.
The study led by Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the Indian Medical Association's national task force on coronavirus, said that 45 per cent of the people who did not take a precautionary dose reported Covid in the third wave.
The survey covered 5,971 vaccinated people, of which 24 per cent were aged below 40 and 50 per cent belonged to the 40-59 age group.Women accounted for 45 per cent of the people surveyed, while 53 per cent were healthcare workers.
A total of 3,361 people reported getting infected at least once. Of these, 2,311 (70 per cent) had Covid during the third wave, it said. "Of the 5,971 people, 2,383 took the booster dose and 30 per cent of them reported Covid during the third wave," the study said.
The boosted group also had a greater proportion of healthcare workers and higher N95 use. Of the 716 people who got infected even after taking a precautionary dose, three per cent were asymptomatic, 58.5 per cent had a mild infection, 37 per cent had moderate, and 0.3 per cent had severe disease. The researchers also concluded that a long gap after the second dose correlated with a higher chance of infection during the third wave.
Also, "giving a third dose before a six-month gap did not make a difference in the infection rate", they said.
The study also showed that the third wave affected those aged below 40 the most -- around 45 per cent of them contracted the disease. It said 39.6 per cent in the 40-59 age cohort and 31.8 per cent in the 60-79 age group reported Covid during the third wave.
Only 21.2 per cent of the people aged above 80 were infected. The third wave fuelled by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus and it infected more women (41 per cent) than men (36.8 per cent).
