India Starts COVID-19 Vaccination For Children 15-18 Years Old

PIXABAY ILLUSTRATION

JAKARTA - India has started to vaccinate against COVID-19 for teenagers or children aged 15-18 years amid concerns over the increase in the Omicron variant.

Private and public schools will be used as child vaccination centers and school authorities have been asked to report daily vaccination data to state governments.

"Children will be given vaccines in their schools. They can also go to vaccination centers for injections... they just go to them," said Gujarat's health commissioner, Jai Prakash Shivahare.

Authorities in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state, hope to inject the vaccine into 3.6 million children this week.

"We have the capacity and we have vaccines to give to most of the children. We seek cooperation from parents and ensure children are vaccinated immediately," Shivahare said.

Thousands of children -- mostly accompanied by their parents -- queued outside schools, medical centers and special health camps on Monday morning to get their first dose of vaccine.

The government has only provided Bharat Biotech's Covaxin vaccine, the only vaccine that has an emergency use permit for the 15-18-year-old age group, the health ministry said last week.

Meanwhile, adults in India received the Covaxin vaccine, AstraZeneca's Covishield, and the Sputnik V vaccine.

A number of countries, including the United States, Britain and South Korea, have reported cases of transmission among children leading to a spike in cases in recent weeks and they are encouraging parents to ensure their children are vaccinated.

The United Nations agency for children's affairs, UNICEF, estimates that India has the largest youth population in the world at 253 million.

As of Monday, authorities reported 33,750 new cases of COVID-19 and 123 deaths. The total number of cases of the highly contagious Omicron stands at 1,700 in India, according to the health ministry.