Kerala health officials stated that cases among those fully vaccinated for Covid-19 constituted a sizable chunk of the daily Coronavirus case count over the past two weeks. Experts added that of all the infected individuals only some required oxygen beds or ICU admission as vaccination reduced the severity of symptoms.
The data show that 1,19,401 positive cases were reported from Kerala in the past 15 days, from October 19 to November 2. Of these, the data show, 1,00,593 had been eligible for vaccination of which 67,980 (57.9 per cent of the total case count) had got either both doses or a single dose, as per the Indian Express report. And of those eligible for vaccination among the positive cases, 40,584 (34.9 per cent of the total count) were fully vaccinated and 27,396 others (22.9 per cent of the total count) had only one dose — the rest had no vaccine history.
Taking cognizance of the rapid spike in cases, Kerala Health Minister Veena George said the trend of breakthrough infections was anticipated and also pointed out that it also proved that vaccination could prevent the severity of the Covid-19 infection. She also added that in the last one week, only around 2 per cent of the 77,516 active cases required oxygen beds and about 1.5 per cent needed ICU admission.
In Kerala, 95 per cent of the eligible population has received the first dosage whereas 52 per cent of them received both. Currently, over 50 per cent of India’s cases are being reported from Kerala, which also accounts for 45 per cent of the active cases in the country.
“Kerala has got immunity mainly from vaccination rather than infection as revealed by the state’s recent seroprevalence survey. In many other states, the high prevalence of antibodies was mainly due to the widespread infection,’’ George told Indian Express(IE).
“Although fully vaccinated persons are getting infected, deaths among them due to Covid are very rare. In cases where fully vaccinated people died, the victims had been either very old or had severe comorbidity factors,” she added.
Meanwhile, Dr T S Aneesh, a member of the state’s expert committee on Covid, told IE that health workers, frontline workers, government officials and teachers on election duty, had been first to get fully vaccinated. “The data on infection among the fully vaccinated is a reason to suspect whether the immunity level in the fully vaccinated is going down. Another factor is that health workers, who are among those with breakthrough infections, have better access to testing,” he said. Aneesh said that in places or states where the natural infection of Covid was very high, chances of breakthrough infections are very low.
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