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Niti Aayog member (health) Dr VK Paul said that the study was conducted on 1.5 million doctors and frontline workers. “Protection to the extent of 93% was seen (in people who were administered the Covishield vaccine) and this was during the second wave which was driven by the Delta variant of Covid-19... also 98%mortality reduction was seen.”
"No vaccine guarantees that infection will not happen but serious disease gets prevented and nearly eliminated. I urge you to please be vigilant, be careful, have faith in our vaccines and continue to be careful in the weeks and months ahead," he added.
In the Vin-WIN study, authors calculated incident rate and incident rate ration. Vaccine effectiveness was calculated as one-incident ration. Both crude and corrected rates were estimated and adjusted for the force of pandemic, second wave and the changing numbers in the three groups on the daily basis. The study was achieved at no additional cost by analysing available data, as per the official release.
The VIN-WIN cohort study was carried out on anonymised data from the existing Armed Forces health surveillance system which had been enhanced for monitoring COVID-19. The surveillance system had data for daily vaccinations with first and second dose, dates of testing positive for COVID-19 and COVID related deaths; which were analysed, the official statement also said.
Nearly 88% of all vaccine doses administered in India to date have been SII's Covishield shot, a version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, a Reuters report said.
The government expects the company to raise supplies of its Covishield vaccine to about 120 million doses in August from 100 million doses in June.