Centre’s Decision on Covid Vaccination for Children ‘Unscientific’: Senior AIIMS Doctor
After Narendra Modi announced their decision to vaccinate children against COVID 19, a senior epidemiologist at AIIMS said that the Centre’s decision is ‘unscientific’ and won’t yield any additional benefit. Dr Sanjay K Rai is the prime investigator of Covaxin trials for adults and children at AIIMS.
He is also the president of the Indian Public Health Association. He also said that before announcing the decision, data from other countries must be analysed who have already begun vaccination for children.
@PMOIndia @narendramodi @MoHFW_INDIA
As of now, the best protected person on this earth is a person who recovered from COVID-19. Evidences suggests that natural immunity provides much better protection than any vaccine (> 1300% better protection than the 2 doses of mRNA vaccine)— Dr Sanjay K Rai (@drsanjaykrai) December 25, 2021
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He had tweeted, “I am a great fan of PM Modi for his selfless service to the nation and taking right decisions at right time. But I am completely disappointed with his unscientific decision on children vaccination,” Rai said in a tweet tagging the Prime Minister’s Office.
PM Modi had announced to the nation through television that vaccination against COVID 19 for children between ages 15-18 years will begin from January 3. With this step, more students will be comfortable going to schools and colleges and fighting against the pandemic. It will also normalize going to offline classes like before.
Describing his point of view, Sanjay K Rai said that there should be an objective to introduce this vaccine drive. It should either prevent the virus infection or its severity/death.
He said that according to worldwide data, people are dying even after taking booster jabs. The vaccine is not able to make a significant dent in the COVID 19 infection. He added that 50,000 cases every day in the UK prove that the vaccines are not avoiding the infection significantly.
He said mortality due to COVID-19 in susceptible populations is around 1.5 per cent, which means 15,000 deaths per million population. “Through vaccination, we can prevent 80-90 per cent of these deaths, which means that 13,000 to 14,000 deaths per million (population) can be prevented,” he added.
Rai further explained that the severity of death in children is very low, according to worldwide data, only 2 deaths per million were reported. The US started vaccinating children a few months back. He concluded that both the objectives are not fulfilled by inculcating vaccines to children and before starting the drive, worldwide statistics must be analysed.
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