• Nathella Pavan Kumar, C Padmapriyadarsini, K R Uma Devi, V V Banurekha, Arul Nancy, C P Girish Kumar, Manoj V Murhekar, Nivedita Gupta, Samiran Panda, Subash Babu, and Balram Bhargava.
• Department of Immunology, ICMR-National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
• Indian J Med Res. 2021 May 1; 153 (5&6): 671-676.

Background & ObjectivesVaccination against SARS-CoV-2 is a recommendation from the World Health Organization as the foremost preference in the current situation to control the COVID-19 pandemic. BBV152 is one of the approved vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in India. In this study, we determined SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody levels at day 0 (baseline, before vaccination), day 28 ± 2 post-first dose (month 1) and day 56 ± 2 post-first dose (month 2) of BBV152 whole-virion-inactivated SARS-CoV-2 recipients, and compared the antibody responses of individuals with confirmed pre-vaccination SARS-CoV-2 infection to those individuals without prior evidence of infection.MethodsBlood samples were collected from 114 healthcare professionals and frontline workers who received BBV152 vaccine from February to May & June 2021. Prior infection with SARS-CoV-2 was determined at baseline. Serum samples were used to estimate SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein-specific IgG [IgG (N)], spike protein-specific IgG [IgG (S)] and neutralizing antibodies (NAb).ResultsParticipants with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection after a single vaccine dose elicited IgG (N) and IgG (S) antibody levels along with NAb binding inhibition responses levels were similar to infection-naïve vaccinated participants who had taken two doses of vaccine.Interpretation & ConclusionsOur preliminary data suggested that a single dose of BBV152-induced humoral immunity in previously infected individuals was equivalent to two doses of the vaccine in infection-naïve individuals. However, these findings need to be confirmed with large sized cohort studies.

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