Vaccination process: What about children?

With government’s all across the country celebrating the milestone achieved with regard to the vaccination of the people to fight Covid pandemic, the study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, has claimed that the kids act as spreaders of Covid, emerging variants. However, the government, especially the health department celebrated the achievement of covering 100 per cent people in the first dose. According to the study, the children, which have not been vaccinated fully so far, could deteriorate the already fragile situation. The non-vaccination of the children has led to the closure of educational institutions for a longer period in the Valley, which has affected the education of the students. The prolonged closure of schools due to Covid-19 has impacted education at all levels. Not only academic learning, the school closure has resulted in loss of social and emotional learning which is important for holistic development of children. The vaccine as per the health experts has been found to be safe and effective in preventing Covid-19 in children. They believe that the paediatric vaccine can also prevent further waves of Covid-19. While children mostly get mild illnesses, they can spread the virus to others, they believe and also it is hard to defeat Covid-19 pandemic without vaccinating children. One fails to understand why the government is delaying the process of vaccinating the children. There is a need to speed up the process of vaccinating the children so that the findings of the study can be prevented in Jammu and Kashmir and the situation is improved on time. The health department must not delay the process of vaccinating the children here and ensure that the situation is put under control.