Until July 13, Chandigarh administered 55,475 precaution doses of Covid-19

Recently, on the recommendation of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, the gap between the second and precaution doses of Covid-19 was reduced from nine to six months.

From April 10 this year, citizens above 18 years of age were eligible for precaution dose of Covid-19 vaccine. As many as seven private hospitals in Chandigarh offered it on a payment basis. The precautionary Covid-19 vaccine was administered to all those who had completed nine months after receiving the second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Vaccination protects from Covid-19 disease severity, hospitalisation and death among the patients, says Prof Madhu Gupta, Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, PGI, and principal investigator for the clinical trials of the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine at the institute.

“It is wise to get the booster dose after completion of two doses of Covid-19 vaccination. It is seen that immune response wanes off with time in about 9-12 months’ time which should be boosted with another dose. There is evidence that since Covid-19 vaccines also induce cell-mediated immunity and offer cross-protective immunity against different variants of virus hence booster dose may provide protection in the subsequent waves of Covid-19 infection,” she explains.

“The booster dose should be taken by all persons as immunity generated by the second dose wanes over a period of time,” explains Prof Rakesh Kochhar, former head, Department of Gastroenterology, PGI.

Meanwhile, Chandigarh on Wednesday recorded 72 new positive cases, with the average number of positive cases in the last seven days being 58 and the positivity rate in the last one week being 5.7 The active cases are 408. As many as 1,407 samples were tested in the last 24 hours.