Dikhyaa Mohanty 
The Bhubaneswar-based Institute of Life Science (ILS) informed that about 20 per cent of the fully vaccinated people in Odisha have failed to develop antibodies against SARS-CoV2, and they may require booster doses.
According to the reports, ILS director Dr Ajay Parida stated that even if Odisha have vaccinated over 61.32 lakh people with both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, including more than 10 lakh people in Bhubaneswar, about 20 per cent of them have failed to develop antibodies against SARS-CoV2, and they may require booster doses.
He says – “Though the antibody level is 30,000 to 40,000 in some Covid infected people, it is below 50 in a significant number of vaccinated individuals. If the antibody level is 60 to 100, then we can say the person is antibody-positive.”
Dr Ajay Parida further stated that the efficacies of Covishield and Covaxin vaccines are only 70 to 80 per cent and the inability to develop antibodies despite taking double doses of the Covid-19 vaccines could be due to individual differences in genetic order. Apart from children and adolescents in the age group of 0 to 18 years along with these 20 per cent vaccinated adults are vulnerable to Covid-19 infection and that they need to be extra careful during the possible third wave of the pandemic.
Further, he added that the Central government is mulling for a third dose, or a booster dose, for people who have not developed antibodies despite getting double doses of the vaccine. The decision regarding the booster dose will be taken soon by the ICMR and deliberation is on whether the people with little antibodies should take the vaccine of the same or different brand.
