‘Vaccinated People Still Need To Take Covid Precautions’ Says Health Ministry

Vaccination doesn't mean that people can go back to normal. Vaccinate people will still have to use their mask and follow all precautions as the vaccine will take time to develop immunity.

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New Delhi: The Covid-19 vaccination drive began today, i.e., January 16^th 2021 while this is the moment everyone has been waiting for it doesn’t mean things can just go back to normal. Vaccinated people too have to follow certain precautions in order to keep themselves and others safe.

Vaccine will take some time to for the people who get vaccinated to develop immunity, as the both the approved vaccines are administered in two doses and four weeks apart. India has approved two vaccines – Covishield, the Oxford-AstranZeneca vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute, and Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech and ICMR – for emergency use.

Precautions to be taken

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, “While the vaccine is an important part of COVID-19 protection, it is important to emphasize the continued practice of COVID Appropriate Behaviours or CAB (frequent and thorough hand washing using soap and water, wearing a mask/face cover and physical distancing of 2 Gaj (6 feet)) for personal safety and prevention of community transmission.”

World Health Organization, chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan, "We are not going to achieve any levels of population immunity or herd immunity in 2021," she said, stressing the need to maintain physical distancing, hand-washing and mask-wearing according to an Agence France-Presse report.

Who will not get the vaccine

A person has to be at least 18 years or above to receive the vaccine. The vaccine will not be administered to few people this time, this include pregnant or women who are unsure of their pregnancy, lactating mothers. People with comorbidities such as – cardiac, pulmonary or neurological etc. People who have immune-deficiencies or are HIV positive etc will not get the vaccine.

Side effect to watch out for

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare listed out vaccine side effects:

For Covaxin, the adverse effect following immunization (AEFIs) include coloration or presence of particulate matter. Some mild side effects include - injection site pain, headache, fatigue, fever, body ache, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, giddiness-dizziness, tremor, sweating, cold, cough, and injection site sweating.

For Covishield, the AEFIs include Headache, fatigue, myalgia (pain in muscle), injection site tenderness, malaise (weakness), pyrexia, chills, arthralgia, and nausea. Vaccinated can take paracetamol if such mild symptoms occur.

Almost three lakh beneficiaries from the priority groups will be administered the vaccine at over 3,006 vaccination sites spread all over the country and as per reports around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site.

The vaccine will be first offered to the healthcare workers, frontline workers and those above 50 years of age, followed by the population below 50 with comorbidities. After that, the remaining population will be inoculated based on disease epidemiology and the availability of the vaccine.