Govt May Allow Covid Booster Dose For People Travelling Abroad Soon — All You Need To Know

People travelling abroad for education, employment, sports, and for attending official or business commitments may soon be allowed to receive precautionary dose of Covid-19 vaccine

Representational Image | AFP

New Delhi: People travelling abroad for education, employment, sports, and for attending official or business commitments may soon be allowed to receive precautionary dose of Covid-19 vaccine, reports news agency PTI quoting official sources. 

Discussions are also underway on whether overseas-bound travellers opting for booster dose should receive the shot at private vaccination centres and pay for it, they said.

At present, frontline and healthcare workers and senior citizens above the age of 60 are being administered precaution doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

With scheduled international flights set to resume from Sunday, the Ministry of External Affairs recently highlighted the travel restrictions being enforced by certain countries in view of the requirement of a third/booster dose and how that is impacting necessary travel of Indian travellers, sources with knowledge of the matter told PTI.

"In view of these, the health ministry is actively considering to allow booster/precaution dose of COVID vaccine for those seeking to travel abroad for jobs, admission in foreign educational institutions, participating in sports tournaments, in bilateral, multilateral meetings as part of India’s official delegation or for attending business commitments," an official source told PTI.

The Union Health Ministry has not issued any official directive in this regard. 

The prioritisation and sequencing of the dose would be based on the completion of nine months from the date of administration of the second dose as per the existing guidelines.