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

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.