Decision on booster dose for special cases in 2 weeks: Dr NK Arora

New Delhi, Nov 30: Amid growing calls for a booster dose amid omicron fears, Dr NK Arora, chairman of the country's Covid Task Force has said that a comprehensive policy on additional and booster doses will be made public in the next two weeks.

"The policy will deal with who will require the vaccine, when and how. This needs to be seen in the context that a new variant is coming and with time only we will get to know more information about it. Therefore relevance and effectiveness of the current vaccines will also become apparent with time only," Arora told ANI.

"A booster dose is given in a predefined period after two primary doses. Whereas, an additional dose is only given to those people who have problems with their immune function even after the primary doses. If a person's immune function is not appropriately built you give them an additional dose. So these are two different things," he added.

India has maintained that there is no scientific evidence thus far to establish that a booster vaccine dose is needed for further protection from the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

"Administering the second dose of Covid-19 vaccine to all adult population, and ensuring that not only India, but the entire world gets vaccinated, is the priority of the government for now," Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) chief Dr Balram Bhargava has said.

"More so, there is no scientific evidence so far to support the need for a booster vaccine dose against Covid-19," Bhargava told news agency PTI.

According to govt data, out of 940 million eligible adults, around 82 per cent have taken their first dose of a Covid-19 jab, while nearly 43 per cent have taken both doses, or, in other words, are fully inoculated.

The nationwide vaccination drive against this viral illness began on January 16 this year. Till now, nearly 1.17 billion doses have been administered.