‘Kids of high-risk parents must get jabbed on priority’

The vax drive for kids is set to start by end of next month or early Jan. Representation pic

Amid talks of rolling out the Covid-19 vaccination programme for children by the end of next month or early January, the state paediatric task force has suggested that children of high-risk parents, too, should be vaccinated on priority apart from children with comorbidities. They said, children, who are generally asymptomatic carriers, can pass on the infection to their parents, who are in the high-risk category.

"The children of high-risk category parents can be a carrier to spread the infection to them even if the parents are vaccinated, because of low immunity. That's why we have made the suggestion to consider vaccinating these children on priority too," said a member of the state paediatric task force. On October 7, mid-day had reported that the task force has suggested vaccinating children with comorbidities on priority.

"These suggestions are made in case there is a shortage of vaccines for children, like we had in the initial days when the vaccination drive for the adult population began. If we have enough vaccines to vaccinate the entire children population, then we should vaccinate all of them at the earliest," said Dr Bakul Parekh, paediatrician and member of the paediatric state task force.

While the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to continue with their present 325 vaccine centres even for children, the task force has suggested having vaccination camps at schools for a wider coverage at lesser time. Till date, 51,207 children aged between 0 and 19 years have tested positive for Covid, of which 14,307 are in the 0-9 age group. It is said that the paediatric vaccination drive will begin with two Covid vaccines - ZyCoV-D and Covaxin.

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No. of vaccines likely to be rolled out for children