The government is all set to administer precautionary doses to frontline workers and senior citizens with comorbidities from January 10. Ahead of this, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has said that beneficiaries will not require any new registration for precautionary COVID-19 dose. The ministry has clarified that all those who are eligible for the booster dose can directly be taken an appointment or simply walk-in to a nearby vaccination centre and get inoculated. The online facility has started and schedules are expected to be published today.
“Schedules will be published on January 8. The online appointment facility will also start by Friday evening. Vaccination with onsite appointment starts on January 10,” said the Union Health Ministry.
Meanwhile, the Centre has already announced that the third dose or booster dose or precautionary dose against COVDI-19 will be the same vaccine as administered previously in the first two doses. No mix-match and has been allowed. This means that those who have been administered with Covaxin will receive the same as their ‘precaution dose.’
However, there is no scientific evidence on the effect of the third dose of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin will have on the eligible population. As far as the third dose of Covishield is concerned, there are some Lancet studies on it. It must be noted that it is the AstraZeneca vaccine that is available in India as Covishield. Also, Covishield has been administered to over 90 per cent of eligible people in India.
The precaution dose was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid the rising cases of COVID-19 cases of Omicron variant in the country. Omicron is a highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus and has been declared as a ‘variant of concern’.