Centre looking into need for COVID-19 vaccine boosters

The Centre, on August 10, said that it was looking into the need for booster doses of COVID-19 vaccine and the matter had already been discussed by the national expert committee on COVID-19 vaccination.

Addressing a briefing, NITI Aayog Member (Health) Dr VK Paul said that the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC) held a discussion on the booster dose issue at its last meeting.

“I would say we are watching the science for the need for such imperative very carefully, global work as well as you may know that certain studies in the country are being instituted and we are looking at it very deeply,” he said.

“As you know, WHO has called for a moratorium for booster doses so let us watch this and see how it can be taken forward,” he added.

Earlier in August, the World Health Organization called for a moratorium on COVID-19 vaccine boosters until at least the end of September.

The move was to enable that at least 10 percent of the population of every country was vaccinated, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it,” Tedros added.

This comes after Israeli President Isaac Herzog received a third shot of coronavirus vaccine, kicking off a campaign to give booster doses to people aged over 60 as part of efforts to slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant in the country.

The United States has also signed a deal with Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech to buy 200 million additional doses of their COVID-19 vaccines to help with pediatric vaccination as well as possible booster shots. Moneycontrol