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- India on Sunday reported 16,103 Covid cases and 31 fatalities. The cumulative caseload is 4,35,02,429 (1,11,711 active cases) and 5,25,199 fatalities
- Worldwide: Over 548 million cases and over 6.33 million fatalities.
- Vaccination in India: Over 1.97 billion doses. Worldwide: Over 11.75 billion doses.
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| TODAY’S TAKE |
| Underweight? Your vaccine’s efficacy could be lower |
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- A study by the University of Oxford, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology says that vaccine efficacy may be slightly lower in people who are underweight compared to those who have a higher body mass index (BMI) and have a healthy weight. The study evaluated the risk of severe disease in vaccinated people vis-a-vis unvaccinated people with a minimum gap of 14 days after a second dose.
- The study points out that one of the reasons for lower efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines in underweight people could be due to frailty or other conditions associated with low body weight. Researchers associated with the study also found that underweight people were also the least likely to have been vaccinated, though among those underweight people who were vaccinated, their chances of ending up in the hospital or succumbing to Covid-19 were reduced by 50% when compared to unvaccinated people of the same BMI.
- The study also found that people with a healthy or high BMI and who were vaccinated, were 70% less likely to be hospitalised than unvaccinated people of the same BMI. They — healthy or high BMI people — were also two-thirds less likely to die than their unvaccinated counterparts two weeks after a second dose. However, people with very high BMI negated any advantage with their chances of being hospitalised much higher than those who had a healthy or moderately high BMI.
- The study, which analysed BMI data of 9,171,524 patients over 18 years old who had not been previously tested positive for Covid-19, between December 8, 2020, to November 17, 2021, found that while a person with a BMI of 17 had a 50% increased risk of hospitalisation compared to a person with a BMI of 23 — which is considered healthy — a person with a BMI of 44 had a three times higher risk of hospitalisation when pitted against a person with a healthy BMI.
- According to the study’s lead author Dr Carmen Piernas of the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, at Oxford, the research’s findings “highlight the need for targeted efforts to increase vaccine uptake in people with a low BMI, where uptake is currently lower than for people with a higher BMI.”
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| TELL ME ONE THING |
| Mass ventilation a potent weapon against Covid |
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- Experts are deeply concerned that the world is still not using one of its most effective weapons against Covid — properly ventilating public spaces — more than two years into the pandemic.
- A big worry: “We need to reduce the level of contamination, which the vaccine cannot do alone,” Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, told AFP. “We need a new phase — improving the quality of indoor air.”
- Why: While it is generally accepted that Covid can be transmitted within two metres via both droplets and aerosols, there is still no consensus on the importance of long-distance airborne transmission indoors.
- Study: A team of researchers from the UK Health Security Agency and the University of Bristol reviewed 18 studies in several countries on airborne transmission.
- Findings: In research published this week, they found that people can infect each other when they are more than two metres apart.
- Flahault called for massively increased funding to ventilate many public spaces, starting with schools, hospitals, public transport, offices, bars and restaurants. More details here
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Written by: Rakesh Rai, Sushmita Choudhury, Jayanta Kalita, Prabhash K Dutta, Tejeesh Nippun Singh
Research: Rajesh Sharma
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