Boosters: The right move at the right time

On Friday, the government announced that a paid precautionary dose, or a booster shot, of Covid-19 vaccines will be available to everyone above the age of 18 years starting Sunday. Till now, India has allowed only people above the age of 60, those in health care services or deployed on the Covid-19 frontlines to get a booster shot. The decision to further expand India’s vaccination drive comes at an opportune time. Global studies, both in laboratory settings as well as those that analysed real-world data, have pointed to the need for this expansion in the face of waning immunity. They have shown that vaccine effectiveness starts decreasing after a certain period, widely believed to be around four to six months after people were administered the second dose. Data shows that nearly a third of Indian adults (around 34.4%) received their shots more than six months ago. This expansion also comes at a time when there has been a widespread rollout of such booster doses across the world.

On the domestic front, booster shots for all adults offers a significant advantage — continued protection. While India saw its third wave at the start of 2022, two reasons contributed to the relatively fewer deaths in this surge: The milder nature of Omicron variant and vaccine coverage. While the first factor, the nature of Sars-cov-2 mutations, may be impossible to predict, the second factor remains a matter of policy. The decision to allow booster shots is a correct one, and comes at the right time. It may end up being one of the pivotal moments that defines how the country performs in a possible fourth wave, or against another variant of the virus.