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The Health Ministry on Monday unveiled guidelines for the vaccination of children and the booster shot with the CoWIN platform being prepped to accommodate the new category from January 1. Talking to BusinessLine, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Authority and chief of CoWIN, R S Sharma, said enough doses of Bharat Biotech's Covaxin will be available for children from January 3 and registrations will start from January 1 on the CoWIN platform.
Health Ministry guidelines specify that Covaxin is the only option for the 15-18 set. Zydus Cadila’s ZyCov-D had also received approval for those above 12 years of age but it has been kept out of the set of eligible vaccines for children. About mixing of doses, Sharma said there would be more clarity in the next ten days and the CoWIN platform will be configured accordingly.
“Both the vaccines will be free at government vaccinations centres and chargeable at private centres as is the case right now. The CoWIN platform will show all the vaccination centres having vaccine stocks as they will be putting up their time-table on the platform ,” Sharma said. He said the pricing of the vaccines will be the same as they are for the adult population in private vaccination centres. Children born in 2007 or before, aged between 15-18, can register by uploading their school certificates and ID cards.
“As many students don’t have voter ID and Aadhaar cards, we have permitted school certificates and school ID cards. At present, there are nine eligible documents to register on CoWIN, we will add school ID cards also to this,” Sharma said.
Booster shots
For the booster shot, there should be a gap of nine months or 39 weeks from the second dose. Frontline and healthcare workers need not register on the CoWIN platform as they are already registered. All those getting the third dose will also be issued the vaccination certificate, he added. They will be able to get the ‘precaution dose’ via their existing CoWIN account.
“Although fresh registration is not required for the third dose, slot still needs to be reserved so that they have certainty about vaccine availability,” Sharma said. According to Health Ministry guidelines, eligibility of beneficiaries for the ‘precaution dose’ will be based on the date of administration of the second dose, as recorded in the Co-WIN system.
The CoWIN system will send an SMS to the beneficiaries for geting the ‘precaution dose’ when it becomes due. The registration and appointment services can be accessed both online and onsite. The details of the ‘precaution shot’ will be reflected in the vaccination certificates.