All You Need to Know About COVID Vaccination for Children in India

"Unvaccinated people accounted for nearly 92% deaths due to Covid-19 this year [2022]"

-Director of ICMR on 3rd March 2022.

So the 3rd wave of Covid which was much less severe as compared to the 1st and 2nd wave caused deaths mostly among the unvaccinated population.

With life slowly returning to normal with opening of schools, colleges, and offices and travel restrictions being lifted- the 4th wave which according to a study in IIT-Kanpur, is predicted to hit around 22 June 2022, is a threat mostly to the uncaccinated lot- a large portion of which will be children.

How does COVID manifest in kids?

• Asymtomatic- fortunately most children do not show symptoms or have mild symptoms only

• Covid pneumonia- which is similar to that found in adults

• MISC (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children)- severe post-covid inflammatory disorder which can affect any organ system but most commonly affects the heart, brain and kidneys.

• Long Covid or PASC (Post Acute Sequelae of Covid)- where symptoms of covid like fatigue, breathlessness, bodyache can persist for a long duration of weeks to months

Why vaccinating children against COVID is important.

• With majority of the adult population being vaccinated, the burden of disease will now shift to younger age groups

• Although children have been to seen to have symptoms much milder than adults, the number of children infected and hospitalised in the second wave was twice as much as in the first wave. Another reason why we should not take COVID infection in children lightly

• Children suffer from some unique complications like MISC and Long Covid (discussed above) more frequently than adults.

• Children transmit the disease more effectively than adults as seen in studies. Hence even if the kids suffer minimal symptoms, there is a danger that they might transfer the disease to a high-risk adult who may not be able to survive the infection.

• Herd immunity is the only logical way of terminating the pandemic for once and for all. Herd immunity cannot be achieved if children, who comprise 25-30% of our population are not immunised against the disease.

Which vaccines have been approved in India for kids

As of today, India has approved 5 COVID vaccines for use in children-

1. Bharat Biotech's Covaxin

2. Zydus Cadila's ZyCoV-D

3. Serum Institute's Covovax

4. Biological E's RBD or Corbevax, and

5. Johnson & Johnson and Ad 26COV.2S vaccine

"Approval v/s Availability"

Looking at the above list you might feel happy thinking that you have a lot of options to choose from, but being approved and being available are two different things.

DGCA is the body that approves vaccines for use in India while NTAGI is another government body that decides which vaccine will be available for vaccination drive in the country.

Right now the only vaccines available for kids are Corbevax for children 12-14 years age and Covaxin for children 14-18 years age.

Hence in this blog I would focus only on Covaxin & Corbeva, as these are the only vaccines available to us right now.

As further vaccines become available, I would edit this post to include information above them too (consider bookmarking this for future use).

Corbevax

Corbevax is a home grown vaccine developed by Hyderabad based Biological E Ltd

Type- recombinant protein subunit vaccine, which contains only the spike protein of the virus particle and not the whole virus .

Dose- 0.5ml vaccine is given intramuscular, over the upper arm region.

Schedule- 2 doses, 4 weeks apart. .

Efficacy- data pending

Effective against- alpha, beta, delta.

Adverse effects- Local site pain/swelling//redness/irritation, headache, fever, bodyache, nausea, vomiting, rashes

Cost- Rs 990/dose in private hospitals and Rs 145/dose in Government facilities.

Covaxin

Covaxin has been developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR & National Intitute of Virology.

Type- Whole cell inactivated vero cell type vaccine, which in simpler words means it contains a dead virus which cannot cause disease but will still give you immunity against COVID infection from a live virus.

Dose- 0.5ml vaccine is given intramuscular, over the upper arm region.

Schedule- 2 doses , 4 weeks apart. Precaution dose 9 months after the 2nd dose.

Efficacy- 63.6% against asymptomatic covid, 77.4% against symptomatic covid, and 93.4% against severe symptomatic covid

Effective against- alpha, beta, gamma, zeta, kappa, delta, omicron

Cost- Rs 1200/dose in private hospitals and Rs 600/dose in Government facilities

Conclusions

Would like to conclude this blog by making a humble appeal to all of the readers to get your children vaccinated. Currently available to only 15-18 year olds, the vaccine drive will soon cover children below 15 years too. The vaccination not only saves the individual but also the community as a whole by giving us herd immunity.

Thank you for reading. Comment down if you have any major queries regarding Covid vaccinations.

Regards,

Dr. Zeeshan.

Know more about me here.