MUMBAI (Reuters) – India began vaccinating children aged 15 to 18 towards the coronavirus on Monday because it rapidly expands its inoculation effort to cowl the world’s largest adolescent inhabitants amid fears the Omicron variant will drive a new surge of infections.
Authorities on Monday reported 33,750 new COVID-19 instances and 123 deaths. The complete variety of instances of the fast-spreading Omicron variant detected in India was 1,700, the well being ministry stated.
Private and public faculties will double up as vaccination centres for children and college authorities have been ordered to report their each day vaccination knowledge to state authorities.
“Children are going to be given vaccines of their faculties. They may also go to vaccination centres and get the dose … they’ll simply stroll in,” stated Jai Prakash Shivahare, well being commissioner in Gujarat state.
Several international locations together with the United States, Britain and South Korea have seen infections amongst children fuelling a rise in instances in current weeks and have inspired mother and father to get their children vaccinated.
Authorities in Gujarat, which is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence state, are hoping to give a first dose to 3.6 million children this week.
“We have the capability and we have now the vaccines to cowl many of the children. We enchantment to mother and father to cooperate and make sure the children are vaccinated on the earliest,” Shivahare stated.
The U.N. children’s company UNICEF estimates India has the biggest inhabitants of adolescents on the earth with about 253 million of them.
Thousands of children, many accompanied by mother and father, queued up exterior faculties, medical centres and particular well being camps from early on Monday to safe their first dose of a vaccine.
The authorities is barely giving children Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin vaccine as that’s the solely vaccine with emergency use itemizing for the 15-18 age group, the well being ministry stated final week.
Adults in India get Covaxin, the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is branded as Covishield, and the Sputnik V shot.
(Reporting by India newsroom, Writing by Rupam Jain, Editing by Robert Birsel)
