NTAGI chairman suggests reopening of schools with creation of safe environment amid COVID

National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation's (NTAGI) chairman Dr Nk Arora said that schools should now be reopened for all children in a phased manner amid COVID. Speaking to ANI on Wednesday, Dr Arora emphasised how a safe environment was essential for doing the reopening of schools and claimed that the chance of severe infections and that of death was close to negligible. 

In an interview with ANI, NTAGI chairman Arora said, "Be it primary schools, secondary schools or higher schools, they all should be opened. In fact, primary schools have children aged less than 10 years, and they are least infected by the virus. However, a safe environment should be created by vaccinating all adults in their environment." 

"Children sometimes become the vehicle of transmitting the virus, however, if a safe, virus-free environment is created, the spread of infection can be reduced," he noted.

Zyadus Cadila's ZyCoV-D gets DCGI nod

Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila had been permitted to administer its three-dose COVID vaccine to children above 12 years. Speaking on the aforementioned, Dr Nk Arora remarked, "ZyCoV-D, available for 12-17-year-old children also in addition to adults, will be rolled out in October. Before that, a list and strategy are to be prepared to reach sick children with comorbidities and other diseases in that group. Healthy children will be given vaccines only after adult immunisation is complete."

India's COVID situation

As many state governments have gone ahead with the decision to reopen schools for children as soon as possible, India lodged 37,593 COVID cases, an increase of 2,776 cases has been recorded in the active COVID caseload in a span of 24 hours. This took the active case count to 3,22,327. This took the total tally of COVID cases to 3,25,12,366 and the number of deaths climbed to 4,35,758 with 648 fresh fatalities, according to the data published by the Union Health Ministry. The national COVID recovery rate was recorded at 97.67%, the Ministry said.

States like Gujarat, Delhi, West Bengal, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu have already decided on the phased reopening of schools and colleges. Every government while going ahead with the decision to resume classes, had issued certain SOP's and had maintained the need to follow those protocols to keep infections under control.

(Image Credits: ANI / PTI)