Effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine in preventing infection in dental practitioners: results of a cross-sectional questionnaire based survey

India started its vaccination program at the beginning of 2021, the main beneficiaries being health workers and frontline workers including police, paramilitary forces, sanitation workers, and disaster management volunteers in the first phase. By the time, the second wave of Covid-19 impacted India, approximately 14 million healthcare and frontline workers, including dentists had been vaccinated. AimTo study the effectiveness of vaccination on a subset of high-risk healthcare workers i.e. dentists in preventing Covid-19 during the second wave of the pandemic. Study designA questionnaire based pan-India online survey was carried out to record the Covid-related experiences of dentists prior to and after vaccination. ResultThe sample size for this survey was 4493 respondents from across India. During the second wave, 9.18% (n=364) respondents became positive in spite of the vaccine, while 14.69%(n=78) became positive in the unvaccinated group. A chi-square test of independence was performed to examine the relation between vaccination and the Covid positivity rate in all age groups. The relation between these variables was highly significant, [X2 (1, N = 4493) = 15.9809, p=.000064]. ConclusionOur pan-India online survey inferred that vaccination has a definitive role to play in reducing the positivity rate amongst dentists during the second wave of the pandemic across all age groups.