The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) in collaboration with the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) have done two separate studies which have shown that the Delta variant of COVID-19 can infect people who have received one or two jabs of either Covishield or Covaxin. In the AIIMS-IGIB study, no death has been reported in the 63 subjects, but the study has found out that the Delta variant is predominant in the reinfection cases. All of them got breakthrough infections and among the samples which were genome sequenced, the Delta variant the variant first reported in India.
“Reinfections and vaccine breakthrough infections are rare occurrences and genomic sequencing of vaccine breakthrough infections can provide useful insights. In the present group of vaccine breakthrough infections investigated using genome sequencing, closely overlapping and mirroring the Covid-19 cases in the state of Delhi, the variants of concern B.1.617.2 and B.1.1.7 comprised the majority, but the proportions were not significantly different in comparison with the population prevalence of the variants during this period with high community transmission,” the study said.
While on Monday, an ICMR study claims that Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin is effective in neutralizing both COVID variants -B.1.351 (Beta) and B.1.617.2 (Delta). The study, yet to be peer-reviewed.