Ready to vaccinate children against Covid-19, no need for infra upgrade: Mumbai civic body

As per a survey conducted by BMC in July among children and adolescents, the sero-positivity rate between the age group of 1 and 4 years was 51.04%. Children in the age group of 5 and 9 years showed 47.33% positivity rate

As schools reopened for classes 8 to 12 earlier this week, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has indicated that it is ready to vaccinate the city’s adolescents as soon as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) permits the vaccination programme to roll out to children, and will not require any infrastructure upgrade.

A healthcare worker inoculates a beneficiary against Covid-19 during a free vaccination camp at Shahaji Raje Sports Complex, Andheri (West), in Mumbai. (HT PHOTO)

“We are fully prepared to vaccinate the children but we have to wait for approval of ICMR and their guidelines. As the footfall of adults has declined with the completion of their immunisation, there won’t be any chaos once we start the vaccination of children,” said Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner, BMC. “We haven’t further chalked down any plan for it yet,” he said.

Currently, the city has 325 vaccination centres and around one million children between the age group of 12 and 17 years in the city. Almost 90% of the eligible population in the city (ages 18 and above) have taken at least one of the two-dose anti-Covid vaccines available. This has lowered the footfall of probable beneficiaries compared to the start of the mass immunisation programme in January 2021.

Since the start of the pandemic last March, 49,743 infections were seen among children and adolescents -- 13,947 below nine years of age and 35,806 between 10 and 19 years of age.

As per a survey conducted by BMC in July among children and adolescents, the sero-positivity rate between the age group of 1 and 4 years was 51.04%. Children in the age group of 5 and 9 years showed 47.33% positivity rate. The highest positivity rate was recorded between 10 and 14 years at 53.43%. In the fourth category, teenagers between 15 and 18 years had a 51.39% positivity rate.

“We are expecting that by the end of this year, we will at least have vaccines for children. Once the vaccines get approval from ICMR, children with commodities should be given priority,” Dr Bakul Parekh, member of the State Covid task force said.

Zydus Cadilla’s ZyCoV-D and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin have been tested in children and the results of the trials are expected. The national drugs regulator approved ZyCov-D that has been tested in children 12 years and above for emergency use on August 20 this year, paving the way for inoculation of children under the national Covid-19 immunisation programme. While the trials of Covaxin had 525 volunteers between ages 2 and 18 years, the ZyCov-D trials had 1000 volunteers in the age group of 12 and 18.