Karnataka has to vaccinate 31.75 lakh teens, 15.31 lakh comorbid elderly

Karnataka has a target of vaccinating 31,75,000 teenagers, aged 15 to 17 years, and jabbing 15,31,600 senior citizens, aged above 60 years with comorbidities.

After attending a detailed video conference with the Union government on Tuesday afternoon, Health Commissioner D Randeep said any student ID would suffice for pre-registration of adolescents on CoWIN portal and that the education department data would be used for ascertaining the number of dropouts.

He said decisions have not been taken on how to identify children who have never been a part of the education system. The target of vaccinating 31,75,000 children in the specified age group was arrived at by taking into account the census projections for 2021 and 2022, he explained.

“The whole focus is to first kick start the vaccination drive for teens in conjunction with the education department. The department also has details of students who have dropped out. We are yet to take a call on those who’ve never been a part of the education net,” Randeep said.

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“Initially, we will focus on doing on-site vaccinations where we will go to schools in the presence of the school principal and education department officials. Once we start with off-site vaccinations, we will need a larger endorsement that a particular child is a student of a particular institution,” he added.

Asked about obtaining consent letters from parents for vaccinating kids, he said, “Parent-teachers’ meetings will be held where the subject will be formally placed for discussion and dates will be fixed for vaccination. This will be considered deemed consent. There is no specific Government of India mandate that written consent should be taken from parents. If someone explicitly says he/she doesn’t want to be vaccinated, he/she won’t be.”

He explained that the Centre arrived at the number of elderly with comorbidities by calculating 20 per cent of the fully vaccinated among senior citizens. “As many as 60 lakh elderly have taken the second dose in the state. Twenty per cent of this is 12 lakh. This is the minimum target we have to achieve. They are eligible for the precautionary dose after nine months of having taken the second dose,” he said.

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