Booster Dose Of Covid Vaccine May Not Be Required For All, Says Top Odisha Health Official

A top Odisha health official on Saturday said that the booster or third dose of Covid-19 vaccine may be required to people as per the standards fixed by the National Taskforce On Immunisation and not the entire vaccinated population.

“The parameters required for the third or booster dose are still not clear. It depends entirely on the National Task Force On Immunisation recommendations because it has been found that a third dose might not be required for all the people,” said the Director Of Health Services Bijoy Mohapatra while speaking on the overall Covid situation in Odisha, in the backdrop of demands for the vaccination of the booster does as an effective protection in the event of a resurgence of infection.

“As a State, it will be better for us to wait for the direction and guidelines of the Centre on the third dose of vaccine,” he said.

He said opinions varied on the necessity of a third dose. “While some like to term it as a booster dose, others want it to call it as just a third dose. This is because, generally speaking, a booster dose of any vaccine is taken six months after the last jab,” he said.

It is worth mentioning here that experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) had in October recommended that Covid-19 booster shots should be offered to moderately and severely immunocompromised people.

Since the end of September, several Covid-19 vaccines have been certified by the WHO UEL, including Pfizer-BioNTech, Janssen, Moderna, Sinopharm, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, and Covishield.

Meanwhile, Mohapatra, said that the active case load has significantly reduced in Odisha and the State is better placed than before.

As per reports, the active cases in Odisha reached 2387 on Saturday after detection of 239 new COVID positive cases in the last 24 hours. With this, the total number of positive cases in the State so far has reached 1046798.