Government issues vaccination guidelines for 15 to 18 year olds

The registration for corona vaccination of adolescents in the age group of 15 to 18 years from January 3 will start from January 1. For this, a provision has been made for registration with the school’s identity card (ID card) on the Cowin app. Along with this, the Ministry of Health has also issued guidelines for giving precautionary dosage to adolescents as well as healthcare and frontline workers and people above 60 years of age suffering from serious illness.

The vaccination program against Covid-19 is expanding in the country and now children of 15 to 18 years will also be given vaccine against corona . In this regard, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued guidelines on registration and vaccination campaign on Monday. According to the new guidelines released by the Ministry of Health on Monday, starting from January 3, adolescents of 15-18 years must be born in 2007 or earlier to be vaccinated.

For children aged 15 to 18 years eligible to receive the vaccine, the vaccine option would be ‘Covaxin only’ as it is the only vaccine approved in India with WHO emergency use approval for the 15-18 year age group. A second vaccine, ZyCoV-D, is also approved by the national drug regulator for children 12 years of age and older. It is made by Gujarat based Zydus Healthcare. ZyCoV-D has not yet been included in the vaccination programme.

Here are the new guidelines

– Vaccination of children in the age group of 15-18 years will start from January 3, 2022. For such beneficiaries, the vaccination option would be “Covaxin” only.

For healthcare workers (HCWs) and frontline workers (FLWs) who have received two doses, the third dose called precautionary dose will be available from January 10, 2022.

Precaution dose will be taken after nine months of second dose

According to the guidelines, starting from January 10, healthcare and frontline workers and elderly people above 60 years of age suffering from serious illness will be given a precautionary dose only after the completion of nine months (39 weeks) of the second dose of the vaccine. Elderly above 60 years of age will have to produce a certificate from a doctor for their illness. Whereas healthcare and frontline workers will get SMS automatically to take precautionary dose after completion of nine months. All of the eligible beneficiaries can book the time and place in advance for getting the vaccine from their old login id on the Cowin portal. They will also have the facility to get it done by visiting the vaccination center. This dose will also be mentioned in the vaccination certificate of the person administering the third dose.

Dosage will be done for free at government centers

The ministry has also said that vaccines will be available free of cost to all citizens at government immunization centers as before, irrespective of their income. However, those who can afford to pay for vaccines will be encouraged to use vaccination centers in private hospitals.