India To Come Up With Policy On COVID-19 Booster Shots Soon: Here's All You Need To Know

India will come up with policy on additional and booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the next two weeks. This apart, a comprehensive plan to inoculate 44 crore children aged below 18 years will soon be made public, news agency ANI quoted Dr NK Arora, India¡¯s Covid-19 task force head, as saying.

Who, when and how

This comes as experts have been pushing for a booster dose amid omicron fears. The chairman of India's Covid-19 task force said on Monday that a comprehensive policy on additional and booster doses will be made public by the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) of India.

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"The policy will deal with who will require the vaccine, when and how. This needs to be seen in the context that a new variant is coming and with time only we will get to know more information about it. Therefore relevance and effectiveness of the current vaccines will also become apparent with time only," news agency ANI quoted Arora as saying on Monday.

Booster vs additional shot

Arora also explained the difference between a booster dose and an additional shot. "A booster dose is given in a predefined period after two primary doses. Whereas, an additional dose is only given to those people who have problems with their immune function even after the primary doses. If a person's immune function is not appropriately built you give them an additional dose. So these are two different things," he added.

Reuters

As per News18 report on November 18, India is likely to form a policy on administering the third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. An expert group has been working on formulating a policy document on the third vaccine dose in the country. This third dose could be first recommended as an additional dose and not a booster shot.

Debate over additional dose

There have been a lot of discussions around booster shots recently, with experts weighing in on the option to ramp up immunity especially among immuno-compromised individuals. In October, a WHO panel had recommended an additional dose of vaccines listed by WHO for severely or moderately immunocompromised vaccinated people.

Reuters

Recently, AIIMS, Delhi, director Dr Randeep Guleria said that India does not need to roll out booster shots of the Covid-19 vaccine for now as there is no surge in Covid cases in the country India at present, indicating that the shots already administered are offering protection against the virus.

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