The Study of COVID-19 Infection in Health-Care Workers Post-COVID Vaccination

Abstract

Background: Indian Council of Medical Research report in April 2021 showed the incidence of breakthrough infection ranged from 0.02% to 0.04%, in spite of immunization with the COVID vaccine. Hence, the current study was done to find out postvaccination occurrence of COVID-19 in health-care workers (HCWs) and describe the characteristics of postvaccination illness. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to find out postvaccination COVID-19 illness characteristics such as severity, outcome, and required treatment in HCWs. Subjects and Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted over the duration of 3 months from July to September 2021 on 988 HCWs. The data were collected using Google Forms made available on social media platforms. Continuous data were analyzed by Mann–Whitney test and categorical variables using the Chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test. Results: Seventy-two (7.2%) out of 988 HCWs that participated in the study were tested COVID-19 positive (56.9% by reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction, 38.9% by rapid antigen, and 4.16% by CBNAAT) postvaccination. The observed breakthrough infection was 3.84%. There were 18.3% and 5.6% cases of confirmed COVID-19 infection postpartial and complete vaccination, respectively (P = 0.000455). Those HCWs who had direct patient contact i. e., doctors and hospital staff 62 (6.7%) were more infected than other categories of HCWs (P = 0.010). Out of 72 cases who tested positive for COVID-19 infection, 52 were mild, 18 were moderate, and 2 were severe cases. Conclusion: Complete vaccination with two doses of the indigenous COVID vaccine is highly effective to bring down COVID illness-related hospitalization, severity, and death.

Keywords

• breakthrough infections
• covid-19 vaccines
• health personnel