Vaccination for children against Covid-19 is expected to kick off in August, Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Tuesday informed the Parliamentary meeting of the BJP chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to news agency ANI.
"In BJP Parliamentary Party meeting today, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said that the government would likely start vaccinating children next month for Covid-19. He also said that India is soon going to be the largest vaccine producing country as more companies will get production licences," tweeted ANI.
"We would likely begin vaccinating children from next month," the health minister reportedly said during the meeting," Mandaviya was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times.
As of now, every citizen in India above the age of 18 is being inoculated with the Covid-19 vaccine.
Mandaviya's statement comes amid increasing concerns regarding a third wave of the pandemic, which is likely to affect more children according to experts. The lack of vaccines for kids is increasing worries among citizens.
Days ago, AIIMS chief Dr Randeep Guleria said that children are likely to get their vaccines by September, explaining that it will be a significant move to break the chain of Covid-19 transmission.
"I think Zydus has already done the trials and they're waiting for the emergency authorisation. The Bharat Biotech's Covaxin trials should be over by August or September, and by that time we should get approval. Pfizer vaccine has been already approved by the FDA (US regulator - Food and Drug Administration)," Guleria told ndtv.com.
The European Medicines Agency has already recommended authorising Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 17, the first time the shot has been authorized for people under 18.
In May, the US had authorised the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 15 years old.
The total number of Covid vaccine doses administered so far as part of the nationwide vaccination drive has reached 44.19 crore, the Union health ministry said in its daily bulletin on Tuesday.
A total of 45.7 crore doses have been supplied to the states and Union territories from January till date and an additional 6.03 crore doses are expected to be supplied by July 31. This will amount to a total of 51.73 crore doses supplied from January to July 31, the health ministry said in another statement.
India recorded less than 30,000 fresh Covid-19 cases after 132 days while its active caseload fell below 4,00,000 after 124 days on Tuesday, according to Union health ministry data.
As many as 29,689 new coronavirus infections took the country's tally of Covid-19 cases to 3,14,40,951 while 415 fresh fatalities pushed the death toll to 4,21,382, the data updated at 8 am showed.
