COVID-19 vaccination for children aged 12-14 are most likely to start from March, Dr NK Arora, chairman of the COVID-19 working group of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, said. Vaccination for teens between the ages of 15 and 18 began earlier this month.
“We aim to cover all the 7.4 crore adolescents in the 15-17 age bracket with the first dose by January-end so that we can start vaccinating them with the second dose from early February and finish the second dose by February-end. We want to start vaccinating children between 12 and 14 years from February-end or early March,” Dr Arora told Times of India.
Over 50 lakh teens had registered to receive their first vaccination dose when the vaccination drive opened on January 3. Over 40 lakh youths received a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on the first day of the drive. Over the next 13 days, 3.31 crore children received a vaccine dose, reflecting nearly 45 percent coverage of that demographic.
On December 25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the inclusion of the 15 to 18 age group in the nationwide COVID-19 immunisation programme. The vaccine option for this age group would only be Covaxin, manufactured by Bharat Biotech, according to guidelines issued by the Union Health Ministry on December 27.
The extension of the vaccination drive to youth, which represents a significant portion of the country’s population, comes at a time when the country has been witnessing a dramatic rise in the number of COVID-19 infections. The new wave of the pandemic has mostly been blamed on the Omicron variant, of which a total of 8,209 cases were confirmed.
