Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday said the Union government should proactively procure Covid-19 vaccines to keep children safe from the disease.
In a tweet, Sisodia said that the world has started working on vaccines for children. He tagged a news report about American pharmaceutical company Pfizer saying it will soon start vaccine trials for kids under the age of 12.
The Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has raised concerns regarding the safety of children in India and cited experts saying that kids under the age of 12 have a heightened risk of contracting the infection during a potential third wave of the pandemic, reported the Hindustan Times.
However, All India Institute of Medical Sciences chief Randeep Guleria on Tuesday said that there was no data, either from India or internationally, to show that children will be seriously infected during the subsequent waves of the pandemic ANI reported.
On May 13, India’s drug regulator granted permission for conducting the clinical trial of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin in the age group 2 to 18 years. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences is screening children between the age of 2 and 18 for the trials.
Earlier in June, Guleria had said that the Pfizer vaccine is expected to be cleared for use in India soon and will likely be available for children too. The Pfizer jab has been granted approval by the drug regulatory bodies in the United Kingdom and the United States.
So far, India has administered 23,68,56,505 Covid-19 vaccine doses with 4,56,34,125 beneficiaries getting both the shots, government data showed.
Meanwhile, India on Wednesday registered 92,596 new coronavirus cases, pushing the tally of infections to 2,90,89,069 since the pandemic broke out in January 2020. The new cases were 7% higher than Tuesday’s count. India recorded less than 1 lakh cases for the second day in a row. With 2,219 deaths, the toll climbed to 3,53,528.
Follow today’s Covid-19 update here
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