The Union Health Ministry is likely to announce the blueprint for rolling out the “precautionary doses” the Prime Minister announced Saturday. Top government sources, earlier, had said that there is preliminary consensus in the country’s top technical advisory body on Covid vaccination that the next dose should be of a vaccine based on a platform different from that of the first two doses.
Using the label “precautionary,” keeps this window open: that the next shot could be a new vaccine rather than just a third shot.
As on Saturday, 12.04 crore over the age of 60 have received their first dose of vaccine; and 9.21 crore are fully vaccinated. The official data also shows that 1.03 crore healthcare workers have received their first dose, and 96 lakh are fully vaccinated; 1.83 crore frontline workers have received their first dose, and 1.68 crore are fully vaccinated. Which effectively means that more than 11 crore beneficiaries will be eligible for the “precautionary dose”.
“There is some clarity that if an additional dose is given to a beneficiary, it cannot be, at least in case of inactive whole virus or adenovirus vector Covid-19 vaccine, the same vaccine. So the preliminary consensus is that a beneficiary cannot take three doses of Covishield or Covaxin,” sources said.
Sources said it is very likely that the precautionary dose will be a vaccine of a different platform. Multiple options are likely to available in the coming months. First up is the Hyderabad-based Biological E’s Corbevax, a protein sub-unit Covid-19 vaccine.
#CovidVaccine #ThirdDose #BoosterShot #PrecautionaryDose #Vaccine
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