State tourism and environment minister Aaditya Thackeray, on Tuesday, in a letter to Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya, urged to reduce the minimum age of vaccination from 18 years to 15 years, to keep school and college-going students safe from the infection.
The minister has also requested the minister to allow the third shot to health care and frontline workers who have received both doses. He also said the gap between two doses should be reduced to four weeks.
Aaditya suggested that his conversations with various doctors have revealed that it may be alright to reduce the minimum age of vaccination to 15 years.
“This will enable us to cover secondary schools and junior colleges with vaccine protection,” he has said in the letter.
This apart, Aaditya said Mumbai has covered 100 per cent of the eligible population with the first dose and more than 73 per cent with the second dose. “If the gap between two doses is reduced to four weeks, just like those applying to work/study abroad, the city will cover 100 per cent of its population by mid-January 2022, without asking for more vaccines or altering its delivery schedule,” he added.
Aaditya made these three suggestions to Mandaviya a day after the meeting of the Maharashtra Covid Task Force, which has suggested that restrictions on travellers, schools and public places should continue until more is known about Omicron. The state minister said India’s vaccination drive in the past five months has progressed by leaps and bounds, attempting to cover all citizens. “While most of our country’s life and livelihood is now back to almost normal, the threat of Omicron now looms,” he noted.
Aaditya’s appeal to the Centre came days after the BMC released SOPs and home quarantine norms for international passengers from ‘at-risk’ countries. A seven-day quarantine is mandatory for such arrivals in Maharashtra. An RT-PCR test will be conducted after seven days and necessary steps will be taken accordingly.
