On September 9, the Union health ministry claimed that both single-dose and double-dose vaccination protect almost equally against death by COVID-19.
Specifically, Deccan Herald reported, the ministry has said the first dose is 96.6% efficacious against deaths by COVID-19 and the second dose, 97.5%.
However, both this and other news outlets have reported that these claims go against the bulk of medical research, which has said the current crop of double-dose vaccines are significantly more efficacious after both doses have been administered.
According to Telegraph, the health ministry’s numbers are from an exercise in which it combined data from three sources: of vaccinated individuals, of people who’d had COVID-19 and of people who had died due to COVID-19. The ministry linked them together with mobile and ID numbers.
The ministry had reportedly setup this database to understand vaccination coverage and effectiveness, and is expected to be available for public access via the health ministry website soon.
