A Better Study On Breakthrough Infection Will Help Our Understanding Of The Virus

A better study on breakthrough infection will help our understanding of the wily virus

- Rekha Dixit

In mid-April, Subhash Pandey, 64, a senior officer in the Chhattisgarh health department succumbed to Covid-19. He had taken his second dose of the vaccine two weeks earlier. Pandey's, incidentally, was also a case of reinfection. However, only a week later, when the Union health ministry gave its first presentation on the extent of breakthrough infections in the country, it made no mention of Pandey's death, neither did it share any information on the fatalities caused by breakthrough infection.

Breakthrough infection is a term to describe people getting an infection even after they have been inoculated against it. It is there for almost every vaccine, but at a very negligible percentage. However, with Covid-19, the story is different. None of the vaccines against it, at present, are able to prevent a person from getting infected, said N.K. Arora, chair, Covid subcommittee, National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation.

There is no argument with this scientific limitation. However, the government's data on breakthrough infection is so much in dissonance with anecdotal evidence that questions about data collection are naturally popping up. Across the country, the first batch of inoculated populations—health care workers and frontline workers—are falling ill in big numbers. In government offices, the spread of infection even within the vaccinated population is high, and these infections are being brought home to unvaccinated family members. A senior IAS officer said that in the Jharkhand department he was posted earlier, at least 80 people have had breakthrough infections, and around 15 per cent of them were seriously affected. None succumbed though.