Together More than 66 million vaccine doses administered Since the start of the vaccination campaign in January, India has now vaccinated half of its adult population with at least one dose, and 16% with two. There has been a slight increase in the number of new infections. Kerala, which contributes to the bulk of the infection, also has one of the highest proportions of the population who are double vaccinated. This apparent contradiction ‘underscores concerns about an increase inbreakthrough transition‘, or at least two weeks before the infection was confirmed in those taking the second dose. A recent study conducted by CSIR scientists found that almost A quarter of 600 fully vaccinated care workers are reinfected. Earlier studies by CMC Vellore, and PGIMER, Chandigarh have also reported between 1%-10% of fully vaccinated health care workers to be infected. However, less than 5% of them required hospitalization and no confirmed deaths were reported, indicating the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing serious illness and death. The trend is also evident at the international level. Israel and the US continue to report new cases, despite high vaccination coverage; However even here, the infection rate is very high among the uninfected. The prime suspects, internationally as well as in India, are delta variants and related sub-lineages that are believed to account for the bulk of coronavirus infections. The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) which tracks mutations in coronavirus strains has said that the breakthrough infections reported so far are within the “expected” number. That is, vaccines demonstrated 70%–90% efficacy in large, controlled clinical trials, but lost considerable ability to reduce symptomatic infection when confronted with delta variants, and therefore completely vaccinated. A certain fraction of those who do will remain vulnerable.
While it is a fact of evolution that viruses will mutate to be able to evade antibodies, and therefore, vaccines will have to be upgraded, it seems that the moment has come too soon. A country like India, despite being a major vaccine producer in the pre-pandemic era, has now only managed to get a production line to deliver 10 million vaccines a day. While other vaccines are in the pipeline, they are all designed on the Wuhan-virus platform and although the companies claim that the strength of m-RNA and DNA-based vaccine platforms is the ability to quickly tweak them to accommodate the new variants. potential lies in. Elsewhere in the world, there are no reports yet about vaccine manufacturers specifying a timeline for vaccines designed for the delta variant. Vaccine makers who may receive emergency-use authorizations but are some time away from launch should ideally move toward making vaccines for the delta variant and not rely on their existing pipeline.
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