With the vaccination drive open to everyone above the age of 18 years, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have asked the Central Government to look into the feasibility of having a common vaccination policy for its students, especially the research scholars who visit the laboratories.
In a review meeting of the IITs and other top chains like NITs, IISERs, on Thursday evening, the officials of the institutes requested Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank' for inoculation of all their students, so that they can safely return to their respective campuses. With shortage of vaccinations in the country, the administration of top-engineering colleges urged the government to step in.
During the meeting of IITs, IISc, NITs, and IISERs along with the Education Ministry, the number of rising
COVID-19 cases among students were discussed along with online classes as well as the implementation of the new National Education Policy.
All the IITs demanded a common policy on vaccination for our research scholars, especially those who visit laboratories, to get vaccinated on priority. At present at IITs we have vaccination centers for the priority groups, where the central government is providing the vaccines. We cannot use them for people below 45 years old as state government’s need to provide for this section. State governments are all struggling and there is a paucity of vaccines," a Director of one of the IIT told The Pioneer.
A senior Ministry of Education official said said the demand for vaccination for researchers who visit labs was taken up in the meeting which is of utmost importance to encourage research in the fight against covid as well.
An IIT-Delhi internal survey last month with 3,910 students as part of the findings, the results showed that almost 22 per cent of the students had tested positive for Covid-19 during the March- April period this year whereas 61 per cent saw at least one family member testing positive for the deadly viral infection. Keeping the survey results in view, the authorities of IIT-Delhi had relaxed norms which included flexibility in attendance as well as work-related deadlines.
Last month, 60 students were found positive for the virus in the IIT-Roorkee which led to sealing five hostels. Similarly IIT-Jodhpur witnessed 65 positive cases among students, due to which, G 3 block of the campus was declared as a containment zone.
Sharing details about the meeting, an official said Pokhriyal “commended the institutes in developing low-cost RT-PCR machines, kits, ventilators, mathematical modelling of predicting the trend of COVID-19 and successfully placing them at the disposal of State Health Departments. Many of the research products have been commercialized through the incubation cells and startups set up by these institutes."
An official statement from the Ministry added, “researchers developed Corona testing kit ‘Corosure’, research for the development of a vaccine, which can be stored at room temperature, Genome sequencing to identify the variants of Corona Virus, ‘COVIRAP’ device for rapid diagnostic of pathogenic infection, methods to optimize the use of Oxygen in ventilators, development of Oxygen concentrators, low-cost portable ventilators, etc."