By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: More than 10.5 lakh individuals identified as the most vulnerable, received the third shot of COVID vaccines against COVID-19 till 8 pm on Monday as India opened for “precaution doses” amid a rapidly rising wave of the pandemic, fueled by the Omicron variant.
As per the CoWIN dashboard, nearly 7,32, 146healthcare and frontline workers and 3, 14, 301 of those above 60 years had taken their booster jabs on Monday till the writing of the report.
The government has allowed vaccination with the third jabs to those qualifying both with the pre-booking of slots as well as on-site inoculations.
Officials in the Union health ministry said that while it has been advised that those who have had COVID-19 infection previously within the last 3 months should not take the booster dose now, there is no mechanism to ensure this.
It has also been advised that those with laboratory confirmed COVID-19 or any of its symptoms should not take the vaccine while being sick.
As per the government guidelines, only those having completed 9 months since the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine are eligible to take the third COVID-19 shots.
It has also been decided that only homologous vaccines will be administered as precaution dose, which means those who have taken Covishield earlier will be given the same vaccine and those having received 2 doses of Covaxin on earlier occasion will also get only Covaxin as booster dose.
The Centre has estimated that nearly 6 crore people will qualify for the precaution doses—that is being administered in view of the existing threat posed by the Omicron variant of the SARS CoV virus, by March.
