Government’s decision on Covid vaccination for children’unscientific’ Elderly epidemiologist of AIIMS

Serious adverse events following immunisation are between 10 to 15 per million population, says Dr Sanjay K Rai
. A elderly epidemiologist at AIIMS who’s the top investigator of Covaxin trials for grown-ups and children at the institute on Sunday nominated the Centre’s decision to vaccinate children against Covid”unscientific”and said it’ll not yield any fresh benefit.

Dr Sanjay K Rai, who’s also the chairman of the Indian Public Health Association, said before enforcing the decision, data from countries that have formerly started vaccinating children should be analysed.

In an address to the nation on Saturday night, Prime Minister Narendra Modi blazoned that vaccination against Covid-19 for children in the 15 to 18 age group will start from January 3.

This will reduce the worries of children going to seminaries and sodalities and their parents, and boost the fight against the epidemic, he said, adding that the move is also likely to prop in normalisation of tutoring in seminaries.

“I’m a great addict of PM Modi for his selfless service to nation and taking right opinions at right time. But I’m fully disappointed with his unscientific decision on children vaccination,”Rai said in a tweet tagging the Prime Minister’s Office.

Evolving his standpoint, Rai said there should be a clear- cut ideal of any intervention. The ideal is to either help coronavirus infection or inflexibility or death.

“But according to whatever knowledge we’ve about vaccines, they’re unfit to make a significant dent in the infection. In some countries, people are getting infected indeed after taking supporter shots.

” Also, advance infections are being reported per day in the UK. So this proves that vaccination isn’t precluding coronavirus infection but vaccines are effective in precluding inflexibility and death,”Rai told PTI.

He said mortality due to Covid-19 in susceptible populations is around1.5 per cent, which means deaths per million population.

“Through vaccination, we can help 80-90 per cent of these deaths, which means that to deaths per million (population) can be averted,”he added.

Serious adverse events following immunisation are between 10 to 15 per million population, Rai said.

” So, if you do the threat and benefit analysis in grown-ups, it’s a huge benefit,”he said.

In the case of children, he said, the inflexibility of infection is veritably low and according to data available in the public sphere, only two deaths per million population have been reported.

“In this section ( children), (people) aren’t dying and keeping in mind the adverse goods also, if you do the threat and benefit analysis, also the threat is further than the benefits grounded on the available data,”Rai explained.

“Both the objects aren’t being fulfilled by initiating vaccination among children,”he said.

Many countries, including the US, started vaccinating children four-five months agone. The data of these countries should be analysed before initiating Covid vaccination for children, he said. PTI PLB DIV DIV