“India is celebrating 75 years of Independence. On the occasion of Azadi ka Amrit Kaal, the government has decided to give booster dose free of cost to all people above 18 years of age at all government vaccination centres. This new provision will give additional security to the people of India" said Anurag Thakur, Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting during a cabinet briefing in New Delhi.
Last week, the Union health ministry reduced the Covid-19 vaccine booster dose gap from nine months to six months. The decision was taken after the National Technical Advisory Group of Immunisation had recommended to revise the duration between the second dose and the precaution dose from nine months or 39 weeks to six months or 26 weeks.
India’s cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage exceeds 199.12 crore. As of now, the booster dose is available free of cost to only healthcare workers, frontline workers and all elderly population above 60 years of age at government vaccination centres.
Last month, Mint reported that the government is concerned about the low utilization of Covid-19 booster doses, with only 7% of 18-60-year-olds and 40% of over-60s given the jab so far.
Overall, India has so far administered just 5,10,96,109 booster doses against a target population of around 950 million eligible individuals.
So far, 59,26,210 booster doses have been given to healthcare workers, 1,11,24,805 to frontline workers while 2,98,75,819 booster doses have been given to people in the age group of 18-60 years, and 2,67,53,532 to those above 60 years.
As per the data by the health ministry as of date, utilisation of booster shots in the age group of 18-59 years is particularly low in Arunachal Pradesh (106), Chandigarh (7,152), Goa (7,749), Jammu & Kashmir (8,350), Manipur (12), Sikkim (1,007), Tripura (328) Meghalaya (611), Mizoram (447), Nagaland (647), Puducherry (5,435), Punjab (11,272), Himachal Pradesh (8,104), Gujarat (7,749) etc.
Dr NK Arora, head of Covid-19 working group of NTAGI said, “A very welcome move and is likely to increase the coverage of precaution dose. Covid is very much around us and reporting of new sub-lineages at regular intervals makes it desirable for all eligible adults to go for the precaution dose at the earliest.
