India kicks off 3rd Covid jab exercise

Ramped up vax drive to increase Covid protection.

New Delhi: Lakhs of 60-plus citizens and frontline as well as health workers queued up for their third Covid jab on Monday as India began administering a “precautionary” dose against the infection, a critical step that comes as cases spike alarmingly in the country.

Braving snow, plummeting winter temperatures, rain in some places or unrelenting sun in others, many people could be seen waiting their turn outside vaccination centres across the vast expanse that is India.

An estimated 1.05 crore healthcare and 1.9 crore frontline workers, and 2.75 crore co-morbid people in the 60-plus category is the estimated targeted population, Health Ministry sources said as the ramped up vaccination drive to increase the Covid protection umbrella kicked off -- 17 days after PM Narendra Modi made the announcement on December 24.

In Delhi, which added 22,751 cases to its tally of infections and a positivity rate of 23.53 per cent on Sunday, around three lakh people who took their second dose nine months ago are eligible for their third “booster” dose of the vaccine. In Maharashtra, state Health Minister Rajesh Tope said around noon that the state had administered 91,648 doses. As the “immunity booster drive” got off the ground scenes of the elderly and others getting another layer of protection were replicated in villages, towns and cities. —(PTI)