GOI Says DNA Vaccines For 12 And Older Children To Be Available In About Four Weeks

Vaccine For Teenagers In India: The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) approved the Zydus Cadila's DNA vaccine on Friday. It will now be available for emergency use on adults and children above the age of 12.

The approval comes after the reports of an approaching third wave of COVID-19. Many experts including the committee at National Disaster Management (NIDM) said that the third wave of the virus infections can occur in October this year.

Department of Biotechnology secretary, Dr Renu Swarup told ANI that the Zydus Cadila ZyCoV-D will be given to the age group above 12 and that it is a DNA vaccine.

"For the younger children, maybe 5 to 12 years, and even below there are different stages of the research which is still going on, and mostly all the vaccine manufacturers on different platforms are doing their trials," she added.

She highlighted that the Bharat biotech has got the approval for trial of vaccine on children above five years of age.

"Currently, it's now doing its phase 2, phase 3 for which it got approval for the trials on children."

Dr Swarup added that the vaccine developers are working several trials but it will a little while before its ready for administering. She said that the vaccine for 12 and above is a good development and will make a major difference.

She said, "DNA vaccine which has just received emergency use authorization. we've just been informed that this was going to take about four weeks before they can bring out the doses for the immunisation programme, which children will get immunised. It will be taken by the entire NTAGI Working Group on COVID because they will have to decide, considering how much volume is going to be available. Knowing this, that this is a new technology, a new platform, it does take time for the scale-up of this vaccine."

The secretary added that the schedule of the dosing for categories of children will be decided by the National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group Of India (NTAGI) based on various parameters.