Jabs work against Covid-19 strains, shows study

Covid-19 vaccines are effective in combating mutated variants as well as protecting inoculated individuals from severe illnesses, hospitalisation or death, a study has shown.

The study, conducted by India-based Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, involved symptomatic health workers at the hospital who tested positive for the coronavirus after vaccination with the Covishield AstraZeneca vaccine that is also being rolled out in Kenya.

In collaboration with the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), it analysed nasopharyngeal samples for genome sequencing.

“Genome sequencing is the key test to identify the nature of the virus and the variants that may emerge,” the hospital said in an official statement.

This comes amid concerns on the efficacy of vaccination against the mutated variants of Covid-19 due to several reported cases of infections after partial or complete vaccination in a number of people in India.

Severe illness

In an official presser, Dr Anupam Sibal, the group medical director and senior paediatric gastroenterologist at Apollo Hospitals, said the findings were significant because more than half of the cohort were found infected with the Variant of Concern (VoC) and still escaped from the severe illness, which could have been worse for them without vaccination coverage.

”VoCs are mutated versions of a virus that may spread more rapidly or may cause severe illness and hence notified for global monitoring by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other multi-lateral health agencies,” he said.

“Among 69 people, 51 were fully vaccinated with two doses (73.9 per cent) and the remaining 18 (26.1 per cent) were partially immunised with a single dose, before the infection. The predominant infections occurred from B.1.617.2 lineage (47.8 per cent), followed by B.1 and B.1.1.7 strains. There were only two hospital admissions (2.9 per cent) for minor symptoms, but no ICU admissions and deaths, from this group.”

Raju Vaishya, a senior orthopaedics consultant at the hospital and a key author of the study, said: “We noticed that the post-vaccination Sars-COv-2 infections were seen only in a small subset of our health workers. The majority of these infections were minor, despite being caused by the VoCs."

He added that the immunity in an individual took some time after the vaccination. Therefore it was essential for the vaccinated person to be extra careful at least two weeks after the second dose of vaccination and even further, by taking universal safety precautions like maintaining social distancing, using face masks and hand sanitation.

While dissecting the study, Dr Nelly Yatich, a Kenyan epidemiologist told HealthyNation that she felt the study would yield similar results in Kenya considering the country was using the same AstraZeneca vaccine as India.

“I think the results will be similar. They are indeed confirming what was confirmed in the clinical trials,” she stated.

New consignment

The epidemiologist urged Kenyans to get vaccinated, insisting that the new consignment of 72,000 doses Kenya had received from South Sudan was a boost to the ongoing rollout.

“There should not be any worry about the expiry dates of those vaccines as June is approaching because South Sudan did not have the capacity to roll out that consignment but Kenya can administer all those in a day because we have the capacity to,” she explained.

Last week Kenya’s health ministry disclosed that medical researchers were investigating a mystery variant of coronavirus that could be specific to Kenya.

The strain discovered on May 17 from routine samples collected in Kisumu, is said to have characteristics of both the Indian (B.1.617) and the UK (B.1.1.7) variants.

The variant is, however, still under investigation to establish its genetic composition.

“This new variant still needs further characterisation. Therefore, our scientists are still sequencing to find out whether it truly falls under the variants concern,” said Dr Francis Kuria, the director of public health at the ministry. “But, having two variants in one could be more lethal.”