The Centre has convened a meeting with States on Tuesday to decide on the framework for vaccinating children and administering the booster dose for the eligible population.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Saturday announced a vaccination programme for those in 15-18-year age group from January 3 along with ‘precautionary doses’ for healthcare and frontline workers from January 10. In addition, those above 60 with co-morbidities will also have the option of getting a booster shot on doctor’s advice. So far, Zydus Cadila and Bharat Biotech have got the drug regulator’s approval for using their vaccines on children. However, it is not yet clear if Zydus Cadila’s ZyCov D will be administered on the 15-18 set.

“All the States have a meeting with the Centre on December 28 via video conferencing to discuss the framework for implementing the children vaccination programme and booster dose for healthcare/frontline workers,” a State Health Ministry source told BusinessLine.

According to Uttarakhand Health Ministry sources, there are up to 12 lakh children in the 15-18 age group and the State has stocks of around 5 lakh Covaxin shots. Likewise, in Rajasthan there are about 51 lakh in the 15–18-age group and the State has nearly 4 lakh of Covaxin doses.

“As Covaxin is an injectable vaccine and the workers are already trained to administer it, no further training is needed. However, on the CoWIN platform, there is a need to open a window for the 15-18-year set,” a Health Ministry source said.

According to Bharat Biotech sources, manufacturing has been scaled up in phases across the company’s facilities in Hyderabad in Telangana, Malur in Karnataka and Ankleshwar in Gujarat and Pune in Maharashtra.

“The company is able to expand Covaxin manufacturing capacity in a short timeline, mainly due to the availability of its specially designed Bio-Safety Level-3 production campuses to manufacture inactivated viral vaccines,” the Bharat Biotech source added. “We are on target to reaching our goal of ~1.0 billion doses of annualised capacity and at present the company is producing 60-70 million shots per month,” the source stated.

According to the Health Ministry, currently, States have more than 17.90 crore of vaccine doses with them. However, it is not yet clear how many of them are Covaxin shots.

On the decision to vaccinate children, India's top virologist T. Jacob John, a retired Professor and Head of the Departments of Clinical Virology and Microbiology at CMC Vellore, told BusinessLine that it is welcome step, as also the booster dose plan for frontline and healthcare workers. But “it’s too little and too slow” to face the Omicron onslaught that is around the corner.

“Omicron was knocking at our door from late November, and our best bet was to build a wall of high immunity against it even as we figured out whether that wall was strong enough or not,” John said. “Now, building a wall is a bit too late and too little because what about people below 15 and those below 60 who won't get a booster,” he added. According to him, the booster dose should be expanded to a wider population and children below 15 should also be inoculated.

Omicron cases up

Omicron cases in India stood at 487 on Sunday. For the first time, in Indore, 8 fresh cases were added, per agency reports. Andhra Pradesh added 2 and Karnataka 7.

Overall, India reported 6,987 new cases with 162 deaths in the last 24 hours till 8:00 am on Sunday, per Health Ministry data. Meanwhile, the Delhi government has imposed night curfew from Monday.

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