All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) director Dr Randeep Guleria has confirmed that vaccines for children will be available by September. He further added that Covaxin’s data for children after completion of phase 2/3 trials will be available by September and the approval too is expected in the same month. 

Dr Guleria, who is also the member of the government’s task force, has said that if Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine gets a nod in India then that could also be considered. 

AIIMS has already started screening children for these trials from June 7 and has involved children between the age of 2 and 17. Speaking on the re-opening os schools and educational institutions, he said that schools should now start thinking about re-opening but should keep in mind that these institutions should not become the home of spreading the disease. A holistic approach should be adopted, he said.

States like Telangana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have already directed schools to re-open. Guleria suggested schools call students from non-containment zones on alternate days and directed them to ensure proper Covid appropriate behaviour. The director also suggested to begin physical classes under open air as that would not spread the infection as much as closed rooms would.

Apart from this, an expert panel of India’s central drugs authority has reviewed and accepted the phase 3 trial data of Bharat Biotech’s Covi-19 vaccine Covaxin. The vaccine has shown 77.8 per cent efficacy in the trial conducted on 25,800 subjects, according to the data submitted by the Hyderabad-based firm. 

The Covid-19 Subject Expert Committee (SEC) of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) on Tuesday reviewed the data and accepted it. Their recommendations have been sent to the DGCI.

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