India begins booster dose vaccination campaign for seniors over 60 & frontline workers

Last updated on January 21st, 2022 at 07:05 am

 Today, January 10 marks the beginning of India’s Covid-19 booster dose vaccination campaign for senior citizens over the age of 60 years and frontline workers. The efforts to stymie the highly transmissible Omicron variant the booster roll outcomes at a time when India is recording over 1 lakh cases per day, increasing exponentially with each passing day.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the rollout of a “precautionary” third dose last month along with the announcement of vaccination for children over the age of 15 years with the Covaxin vaccine against Covid-19. All frontline workers, healthcare workers, and professionals, seniors over 60 years who are immunocompromised will be able to receive the third dose of vaccine from today across India.

“Corona warriors, healthcare, and frontline workers have a huge contribution in keeping the country safe… Therefore, from the point of view of precaution, the government has decided that to start administering “Precaution Doses” for healthcare and frontline workers,” PM Narendra Modi had said on December 25.

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Records of the Health Ministry suggest that 5.75 crore people in India are eligible to receive the third dose in the booster vaccination drive. Out of this 2.75 crore are above the age of 60 years, 1 crore are healthcare workers, and 2 crore are frontline workers. Personnel who are deployed for election duty in states bound for Assembly election – Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur, and Goa – have been designated as frontline workers also.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in a tweet on Sunday, that reminder SMS have been sent to more than one crore healthcare and frontline workers and senior citizens to receive their precaution dose of Covid-19 vaccine.

It is to be noted that no mix-and-match of vaccines for the precaution dose would be permitted. The beneficiaries would be administered with the same vaccine as their previous two vaccines. Union Health Ministry has issued the guidelines that the gap between receiving the second dose of vaccine and the precautionary third dose would be nine months (39 weeks).

Furthermore, the health ministry has said no registration is required for the precautionary vaccine doses. The eligible people can directly take an appointment or walk into any vaccination centre across India.