Free Covid Booster Vaccines For All 18-59 Years Age Group In New Delhi: How To Avail This Free Vaccine?

The government of Delhi has decided that it will offer the third precaution dose for free to all adults at government vaccination centres. This comes amid rising covid cases in the capital.

Free Third Dose

Currently, the third dose is available at Rs 375 (plus GST) at private vaccination centres. This dose is administered after nine months or 273 days of the second dose.

On April 10, the vaccination drive for a precaution dose was opened up for all the adults by the Centre.

As per the centre’s guidelines, only the healthcare workers, frontline workers, and those above the age of 60 years, for whom the drive was opened in January and in March, are eligible for the free precaution dose. Earlier this week, Bihar announced free precaution dose for all adults, becoming the only state to do so.

An order from director of family welfare Dr Monika Rana read “All persons aged above 18 years and up to 59 years will now be eligible for precaution dose at government CVCs (Covid-19 Vaccination Centres) free of cost, in addition to healthcare workers, frontline workers, and above the age of 60 years beneficiaries. The provision of paid precaution dose in private CVCs will also continue to be available”.

To ensure that people can book the appointments online, necessary changes have been made to government’s CoWIN portal. Walk-in facilities will also be available.

The Thursday order stated that directions have to be implemented from Thursday itself.

Experts have said that ensuring free vaccination would help in keeping severe disease low in places that have started seeing a surge. Dr Jacob John, former professor of virology at Christian Medical College-Vellore, said, “With cases starting to go up, it is also the time to push for booster dose in all. Having people pay for it is a deterrent, and it is too soon to make it paid-for.”

When 20,480 tests were conducted, the city recorded 965 cases and one death on Thursday. The positivity rate, which shows the percentage of tests returning positive out of the total number of tests, stood at 4.71%.  This was a marginal dip from Wednesday when 1,009 cases were recorded.

Delhi Hospitals Prepared For Covid Contingencies

The Delhi government has adopted a wait and watch approach, with hospitals already prepared to increase beds for the viral infection at short notice. Currently the rising cases and hospitalisation remaining low and the virus is akin to the previous omicron-variant.

In order to track the spread of the infection in the capital, the focus is on increasing the number of tests. A senior official from Delhi’s health department said that “The number of tests has already started going up and it will increase further in the coming days. With hospitalisations remaining low, most people do not want to get tested. However,  we have issued directions to all our health facilities to mandatorily test all those coming in with ILI (influenza-like illness) to keep a track of what is going on”.

When asked about the preparedness of the hospitals if there is a surge in cases, most said that they already do have the plan of action in place and the wards can be quickly converted. A senior official from Lok Nayak hospital said that “We already have separate wards, OTs, delivery rooms and dialysis units demarcated for Covid. For now, there are 250 beds earmarked for Covid patients with the rest of the services running normally. If there is an increase in cases, we can quickly convert these to Covid units. As of now, the number of admissions remains very low”.

An official from AIIMS said the same: “There were only two admissions last week. In case there is an increase, we already have a plan in place.”