NEW DELHI, March 21: The government is considering allowing booster dose of Covid vaccine for all those above 18 years in view of a surge in infections in parts of the world and ease difficulties faced during international travel, sources said on Monday.
Currently, healthcare and frontline workers and those above 60 years are being administered the precaution doses of Covid vaccine. All people above 60 years have become eligible for this dose after the Union Health Ministry removed the co-morbidity clause recently.
The prioritisation and sequencing of the dose is based on completion of nine months, or 39 weeks, from the date of administration of the second dose.
“The government is considering a booster dose of Covid vaccine for all those above 18 years in view of a surge in infections in parts of the world and to ease difficulties faced during international travel,” a source said.
Amid a growing chorus for booster doses by several states, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi also raised the issue in the Rajya Sabha and asked the government to come out with clear guidelines for boosters for those under 60 years, noting that several countries are imposing strict conditions for foreign travellers.
Chaturvedi said several countries want that the second shot of the Covid vaccine should have been taken within a certain time frame, failing which the vaccination certificate will not be considered valid.
In many European countries, she said, vaccines are considered valid only for 270 days. If travellers got their last vaccine shot in April 2021, they cannot enter many EU countries without a valid Covid test.
“Hence, Indians finally looking forward to travelling abroad are now left in a lurch due to the absence of clear guidelines regarding the need for the third additional dose to travel abroad. The present situation regarding the travel and vaccination causes of perplexing situation for Indians,” she said during Zero Hour.
India now has a surplus of vaccines yet there is no clear guideline to vaccinate people below 60 years for those who are seeking a booster dose for travel purposes or for safety purposes, the Rajya Sabha MP added.
White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, meanwhile, said that vaccines and booster shots remain the best means to prevent serious illness from the virus.
Fauci also warned that a highly contagious sub-variant of Omicron variant of COVID-19, known as BA.2, could soon lead to another uptick in coronavirus cases in the US.
The US’ top infectious disease expert said the sub-variant is estimated to account for around 30 per cent of all new cases in the US, and is also the most dominant variant in the country.
Fauci said BA.2 is about 60 per cent more transmissible than Omicron, but it does not appear to be more severe.
“It does have an increased transmission capability,” Fauci said on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “However, when you look at the cases, they do not appear to be any more severe and they do not appear to evade immune responses either from vaccines or prior infections,” he explained. (PTI)
