'Covid booster dose will be recommended in India for sure'

AS the United States has approved the booster dose of the coronavirus vaccine which will start rolling out next month, director of India’s National Institute of Virology (NIV) Dr Priya Abraham said that the booster dose will definitely be recommended in India in future. The Indian government has said that the issue of booster dose is being closely studied. The octagenarian chairman of Serum Institute of India (SII), Cyrus Poonawalla, has already taken the third dose with many employees of the institute.

Speaking with an interview with India Science, the OTT channel of the department of science and technology, Dr Abraham said studies on booster dose have been going on overseas and at least seven different vaccines have been tried out for booster dose. She said the World Health Organisation (WHO) has put a stop to it till more nations catch up with vaccination. The NIV director said it has been halted because of an alarming vaccine gap between high-income and low-income countries but added that recommendations for boosters will happen in the future.

A booster dose is an additional dose to augment the antibody level which may go down after a period of time following the second dose. Dr Randeep Guleria, director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), said the booster doses might become a necessity because of the virus’s emerging variants.

Cyrus Poonawalla urges for booster dose

Poonawalla said a third or booster dose of the Covishield vaccine – the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine made by SII -- is required six months after the second jab. Last week, he said he took the vaccine's third dose along with several SII employees, PTI reported.

“After six months, the antibodies go down and that is why I have taken the third dose. We have given the third dose to our seven to eight thousand SII employees. For those who have completed the second dose, it is my request to take a booster dose (third dose) after six months,” Poonawalla said, as quoted by the news agency.

The 80-year-old Poonawalla, the chairman and managing director of SII, said the ideal gap between the two doses of Covishield is two months, as against the 12-16 week gap mandated by the government.

He also said that he was not in favour of mixing two different vaccines. He though said that such mixing can be done if a particular vaccine is not available at the time of the second dose.

The WHO has opposed booster doses at present as many poor countries are still at shortage of vaccines.