Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 30: As the recruitment of volunteers for the phase 2/3 clinical trial of COVID-19 vaccine ‘Covovax’ among children aged 2 to 17 years began on Sunday at the Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, the World Health Organisation and other agencies suggested giving priorities to the teachers and school staff in vaccination drive..
“Teachers and school staff should be among the groups prioritised for Covid-19 vaccinations so that schools in Europe and Central Asia can stay open,” the WHO and UNICEF said on Monday.
Measures to ensure that schools can stay open throughout the pandemic “include offering teachers and other school staff the Covid-19 vaccine as part of target population groups in national vaccination plans,” the UN agencies said.
Indonesia’s capital Jakarta reopened 600 of its schools on Monday as coronavirus restrictions eased, though a teacher federation urged caution and warned of clusters in classrooms caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant.
Jakarta’s infection rate has dropped, authorities said, from a peak last month that saw Indonesia become Asia’s coronavirus epicentre, with more than 40 lakh cases and 1,31,000 fatalities overall.
Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said 610 of 10,000 schools deemed safe had opened at 50% capacity in a resumption of a trial that started in April. “The conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic are much more under control,” he said on Instagram.
Japan has closed a school in the eastern city of Chiba for the rest of this week, after confirming COVID-19 infections in two teachers who accompanied students to watch the Paralympic Games currently on in Tokyo, a city official said on Monday. The two were among six teachers of the Kaizuka Junior High School who had tested positive for the disease by Sunday, said the official of the city’s education board, after a trip with 18 students in two buses to last Wednesday’s goalball event.
In India, Department of Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) said the schools should prepare timetable as per the occupancy limit of classrooms following Covid norms. The guidelines issued by it also state that maximum 50% students per classroom may be called depending upon capacity, lunch breaks in schools to be staggered to avoid crowding, and should be held in open areas. Students and teachers living in COVID-19 containment zones should not be allowed to come to schools, colleges, and institutions should set up quarantine room for emergency use.
India’s rising output of COVID-19 vaccines and the inoculation of more than half its adult population with at least one dose are raising hopes the country will return as an exporter within months, ramping up from early next year.
India’s daily vaccinations surpassed 10 million doses on August 27, with national vaccine production more than doubling since April and set to rise again in the coming weeks. New production lines have been set up, a vaccine developed by Cadila Healthcare won recent approval, and commercial production of Russia’s Sputnik V is starting in India.
The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine maker, is now producing about 150 million doses a month of its version of the AstraZeneca shot, more than twice its April output of about 65 million, official sources said. “No fixed timeline on exports but the company hopes to restart in a few months,” the sources said.
Meanwhile, Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine contamination woes in Japan have widened with another million doses being temporarily suspended, after foreign substances were found in more batches and two people died following shots from affected lots. The suspension of Moderna supplies, affecting more than 2.6 million doses in total, comes as Japan battles its worst wave of COVID-19 yet, driven by the contagious Delta variant, with new daily infections exceeding 25,000 this month for the first time amid a slow vaccine rollout.
The latest reports of vaccine contamination came from Gunma prefecture near Tokyo and the southern prefecture of Okinawa, prompting the suspension on Sunday of two more lots in addition to the 1.63 million doses already pulled last week.