Mandaviya asks States to set up separate centres for kids to avoid jab mix-up
A day before the launch of countrywide exercise to vaccinate millions of children aged between 15 and 18 against Covid-19 with the CoWIN platform till Sunday evening recording over six lakh registrations, the Centre has cautioned the State Governments against mixing up of shots with those being given to the adult population.
Children will be given only Covaxin, while the adult population of the country is being administered Covishield and Sputnik V besides Covaxin. The doses will be administered at schools, hospitals and through special camps to begin from January 3.
In a meeting held with the States online, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya asked them to take necessary measures, including setting up separate vaccination centres, to avoid mixing-up of Covid vaccines during administration of shots to those in the 15-18 age group. Data on the Cowin dashboard showed 3,15,416 registrations for this age group until 11.30 pm Saturday.
Mandaviya appealed to parents to register their eligible children. “If the children are safe, then the future of the country is safe,” he tweeted.
This began a week after the Prime Minister’s announcement that Covid-19 vaccination will start January 3 for children.
“To ensure smooth implementation of the guidelines, Mandaviya held an online interaction with Health Ministers and principal secretaries and additional chief secretaries for health of States and Union Territories (UTs). He advised them to ensure orientation of vaccinators and vaccination team members for the inoculation exercise for those in the 15-18 age group and for identification of dedicated vaccination session sites for this category of beneficiaries,” said an official from the Health Ministry.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 25, 2021, had announced that the vaccination for the age-group 15-18 years is scheduled to begin from Jan 3 while administration of precautionary third dose for the vulnerable categories is to commence from January 10, 2022. As per guidelines issued by the Union Health Ministry “all those whose birth year is 2007” or before, shall be eligible.
He said that over 19.81 crore balance and unutilized COVID-19 vaccine doses are presently available with States and Union Territories.
Further, the Ministry informed that more than 152.31 crore (1,52,31,16,865) vaccine doses have been provided to States/UTs so far through the Government of India, free of cost channel, and through direct State procurement category.
Under the Nationwide Covid vaccination drive, 145.44 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far. India’s national vaccination programme has been one of the most successful and largest vaccination programmes compared with the many developed western nations with significantly low population base to vaccinate, the official added.