COVID-19: Govt to begin vaccinating 12-14 age group by March

Expanding the ambit of children’s vaccination drive, India will begin vaccinating 12-14-year-olds by March of this year, Dr NK Arora, chairman of COVID-19 Working Group of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI), said.

Of the 7.4 crore children in the 15-18 age bracket, over 3.45 crore have already received the first dose of Covaxin so far. The drive has covered 45 per cent of children in this age group within 13 days, which began on January 3 this year.

"Adolescents in this age group have been actively participating in the inoculation process, and going by this pace of vaccination, the rest of the beneficiaries in the 15-18 age group are likely to be covered with the first dose by January-end and subsequently their second dose is expected to be done by February-end," said the Chairman of the Covid working group of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI).

At present, only Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and Zydus Cadila's ZyCoV-D have been approved for young adults (12 and above).

Experts and doctors have welcomed the announcement.

"This subset of the population is the one which is already into their normal life like going to school, colleges or using mass modes of transportation and they often mingle with each other. Therefore, they are at a higher risk of getting infected and transmitting this infection to patients who are vulnerable," said Viswesvaran Balasubramanian from Hyderabad-based Yashoda Hospitals to India Today.

Dr Parmita Kaur of Aakash Healthcare said it is a positive step because as more and more people get vaccinated, they will be able to fend off the infection. Now in the last few months, we have seen that vaccinated individuals respond well to the infection. Their number of days to recovery have reduced.

India began administering the "precaution dose" -- the third jab of COVID-19 vaccine -- to healthcare, frontline workers including personnel deployed for election duty and those aged 60 and above with comorbidities from January 10 as the country witnessed a spike in Covid infections, driven by the highly-transmissible Omicron variant of the virus.

(With inputs from Sneha Mordani)