Plan to vaccinate over 44 crore children ready

New Delhi: With the emergence of new Covid variant 'Omicron', Covid-19 task force chairman Dr NK Arora said a comprehensive policy on the booster and additional doses of Covid vaccine will be announced in two weeks. He also said that a plan has been developed to vaccinate over 44 crore children.

"National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) is coming up with a comprehensive policy on the booster and additional doses in the next two weeks. 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," said Dr Arora.

"There is a difference between booster dose and additional dose. 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.