Experts weigh in: Trust the vaccine, but trust your mask even more
A researcher from the IGIB, one of the 10 central laboratories of India’s genomic sequencing network, said all of the omicron cases were in fully vaccinated individuals, meaning there is a possibility of another surge driven by the variant.
4 min read
A health worker seen arranging oxygen cylinder at the CWG covid care centre in 2021. (Express Photo by Praveen Khanna/Representational/File)The new omicron variant of Covid-19 is more adept at evading vaccine-elicited immunity, leading to more breakthrough infections, said experts. At Lok Nayak hospital, which treated a majority of the omicron cases in Delhi, all but one infection was detected in fully vaccinated individuals.
Corroborating this, a researcher from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), which is one of the 10 central laboratories of India’s genomic sequencing network, said all of the omicron cases were in fully vaccinated individuals, meaning there is a possibility of another surge driven by the variant.
“Vaccination breakthrough is not uncommon even with other variants like alpha or delta, so it is expected. It is definitely the case with omicron. All travellers are fully vaccinated and yet we are detecting omicron infection in them. In fact, all the omicron cases detected at the lab are in fully vaccinated individuals – most travellers are from the UK or US, where rates of vaccination are very high,” said Dr Rajesh Pandey, senior scientist at IGIB.
He added, “And, this is with mRNA vaccines so we don’t know what will happen with Covishield or Covaxin. From all that we know so far, the indication is that omicron has a higher level of immune evasion than delta. The good thing is, from what I have heard from the clinician, the disease hasn’t been severe in these people.”
Would that mean that fewer people will get severe disease and be hospitalised? Dr Pandey says there are too many variables at the population level to say that. “There are too many variables that kick in when a huge population is affected — how many days after vaccination are people getting the infection (antibody levels are higher during the initial months after vaccination), we have a variety of age groups and comorbidities, many remain unvaccinated.”
“Trust your vaccine, but trust your mask more. People should wear N95 masks for the next two months to prevent transmission. If there is large scale transmission – even if the disease is mild – the virus might mutate to evade the existing immune response completely,” said Dr Pandey.
A high level of exposure to the virus during the delta wave might work in India’s favour.
“If you look at data from the US, nearly 73% of the infections are happening in vaccinated people. It is now certain that omicron does evade immunity by vaccines. But, in India, the seropositivity is quite high – over 90% in Delhi and over 80% in Bihar – which may offer better protection against the new variant. We are likely to have an outbreak, but probably not as bad as the UK or US,” said Dr GC Khilnani, former head of the department of pulmonology at AIIMS and chairman of pulmonary, sleep and critical care medicine at PSRI hospital.
India should have approved a booster dose to better protect against omicron, said Dr Jacob John, former head of the department of virology at Christian Medical College in Vellore. “As soon as the WHO declared omicron as a variant of concern, we should have worked towards offering booster shots for better protection to the already vaccinated. We should also have approved vaccination in children who will now act as reservoirs for the virus even if they don’t get sick, and some of them will. In addition, the government has been messaging about a successful vaccination drive but that is counter-productive as people stop following other non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking, social distancing, and handwashing,” he said.
You May Like
