Abstract

Breakthrough infections with SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant have been reported in doubly-vaccinated recipients and as re-infections. Studies of viral spread within hospital settings have highlighted the potential for transmission between doubly-vaccinated patients and health care workers and have highlighted the benefits of high-grade respiratory protection for health care workers. However the extent to which vaccination is preventative of viral spread in health care settings is less well studied. Here, we analysed data from 118 vaccinated health care workers (HCW) across two hospitals in India, constructing two probable transmission networks involving six HCWs in Hospital A and eight HCWs in Hospital B from epidemiological and virus genome sequence data, using a suite of computational approaches. A maximum likelihood reconstruction of transmission involving known cases of infection suggests a high probability that doubly vaccinated HCWs transmitted SARS-CoV-2 between each other and highlights potential cases of virus transmission between individuals who had received two doses of vaccine. Our findings show firstly that vaccination may reduce rates of transmission, supporting the need for ongoing infection control measures even in highly vaccinated populations, and secondly we have described a novel approach to identifying transmissions that is scalable and rapid, without the need for an infection control infrastructure.

Details

Title
Transmission of B.1.617.2 Delta variant between vaccinated healthcare workers
Author
Kemp, Steven A. 1 ; Cheng, Mark T. K. 2 ; Hamilton, William L. 3 ; Kamelian, Kimia 4 ; Chauhan, Himanshu 5 ; Dikid, Tanzin 5 ; Gogia, Hema 5 ; Lall, Hemlata 5 ; Ponnusamy, Kalaiarasan 5 ; Verma, Kaptan 5 ; Dhar, Mahesh Shanker 5 ; Singh, Manoj K. 5 ; Datta, Meena 5 ; Soni, Namita 5 ; Meena, Namonarayan 5 ; Madan, Preeti 5 ; Singh, Priyanka 5 ; Sharma, Ramesh 5 ; Sharma, Rajeev 5 ; Kabra, Sandhya 5 ; Kumar, Sattender 5 ; Kumari, Swati 5 ; Sharma, Uma 5 ; Chaudhary, Urmila 5 ; Sivasubbu, Sridhar 5 ; Scaria, Vinod 5 ; Wattal, Chand 5 ; Oberoi, J. K. 5 ; Raveendran, Reena 5 ; Datta, S. 5 ; Das, Saumitra 5 ; Maitra, Arindam 5 ; Chinnaswamy, Sreedhar 5 ; Biswas, Nidhan Kumar 5 ; Parida, Ajay 5 ; Raghav, Sunil K. 5 ; Prasad, Punit 5 ; Sarin, Apurva 5 ; Mayor, Satyajit 5 ; Ramakrishnan, Uma 5 ; Palakodeti, Dasaradhi 5 ; Seshasayee, Aswin Sai Narain 5 ; Thangaraj, K. 5 ; Bashyam, Murali Dharan 5 ; Dalal, Ashwin 5 ; Bhat, Manoj 5 ; Shouche, Yogesh 5 ; Pillai, Ajay 5 ; Abraham, Priya 5 ; Potdar, Varsha Atul 5 ; Cherian, Sarah S. 5 ; Desai, Anita Sudhir 5 ; Pattabiraman, Chitra 5 ; Manjunatha, M. V. 5 ; Mani, Reeta S. 5 ; Udupi, Gautam Arunachal 5 ; Nandicoori, Vinay 5 ; Tallapaka, Karthik Bharadwaj 5 ; Sowpati, Divya Tej 5 ; Singh, Sujit 6 ; Rakshit, Partha 6 ; Agrawal, Anurag 7 ; Illingworth, Christopher J. R. 8 ; Gupta, Ravindra K. 9 

1  Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Disease (CITIID), Cambridge, UK; University of Cambridge, Department of Medicine, Cambridge, UK (GRID:grid.5335.0) (ISNI:0000000121885934) 
2  Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Disease (CITIID), Cambridge, UK (GRID:grid.5335.0) 
3  University of Cambridge, Department of Medicine, Cambridge, UK (GRID:grid.5335.0) (ISNI:0000000121885934) 
4  Public Health Agency of Canada, National Microbiology Laboratory, Winnipeg, Canada (GRID:grid.415368.d) (ISNI:0000 0001 0805 4386) 
5  Department of Biotechnology, Delhi, India (GRID:grid.415368.d) 
6  National Centre for Disease Control, Delhi, India (GRID:grid.419568.7) (ISNI:0000 0001 0086 9601) 
7  CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi, India (GRID:grid.417639.e) 
8  MRC - University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, Garscube Campus, Glasgow, UK (GRID:grid.301713.7) (ISNI:0000 0004 0393 3981); University of Cambridge, MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, UK (GRID:grid.5335.0) (ISNI:0000000121885934); University of Cambridge, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge, UK (GRID:grid.5335.0) (ISNI:0000000121885934) 
9  Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Disease (CITIID), Cambridge, UK (GRID:grid.5335.0); University of Cambridge, Department of Medicine, Cambridge, UK (GRID:grid.5335.0) (ISNI:0000000121885934); Africa Health Research Institute, Durban, South Africa (GRID:grid.488675.0) (ISNI:0000 0004 8337 9561); Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge, UK (GRID:grid.488675.0) 
Publication year
2022
Publication date
2022
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14411-7
ProQuest document ID
2679000165
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2022. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.