Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Indian youth aged 15-18 years will receive a Covid-19 vaccination starting January 3, 2022. The booster shots will also be available to healthcare workers and the elderly in the first half of next year.
Modi announced that the vaccination campaign for children under 15 years old will begin on January 3. He made this announcement in a fifteen-minute speech, announcing new immunization programs to be implemented in India in early 2019. Prime Minister Modi stated that frontline healthcare workers will be also receiving their vaccines. “precautionary” vaccine doses – or booster shots – starting from January 10.
Elderly people with various pre-existing medical conditions would also be able to get their booster shots starting the same day as medical workers but only following a doctor’s prescription, he added.
Modi also said that India’s scientists are working on a vaccine that can be used in the form of a nasal spray. The 1.38 billion-strong nation currently has three Covid-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use on its territory: Covaxin developed by India’s Bharat Biotech, Russia’s Sputnik V, and Covishield, which is in fact a version of the AstraZeneca jab manufactured by India’s Serum Institute.
“Today, more than 61% of India’s adult population has received both doses of the vaccine. Similarly, about 90% of the adult population has been given a single dose of the vaccine,” the prime minister said, praising the nation’s vaccination drive.
The highly contagious Omicron variant has been quickly spreading around the globe and he urged fellow citizens to take care. But he stressed that it was not necessary to panic because the nation is well-prepared for an increase in potential infections.
Prime Minister of India, Shrikant Sharma, stated that India currently has over 1.8 Million beds available for Covid-19 patients. This includes 140,000 intensive care units and 500,000 beds with oxygen.
A total of 77,032 active Covid-19 cases were registered in India on Saturday, according to the nation’s health ministry.
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