The Government of India is to provide third dose of vaccine. This third dose has been named “precaution dose” or booster dose.

About the precaution dose

• The health care workers, comorbid patients (people with severe medical conditions) and frontline workers are eligible to get the precaution dose.
• Five states in the country are to go for elections. They are Manipur, Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand. Personnel to be deployed in the election duty will be treated as front line workers. And they will also receive the precaution dose.
• The gap between the second dose and precaution dose is nine months.
• The precaution dose is the same as the previous doses.
• The eligible citizens will receive SMS from CoWIN.
• After administering precaution dose, a digital vaccination certificate will be sent.

New Vaccines in the country

Recently, India approved two new vaccines. They are Convax of Serum Institute of India and Corbevax of Biological E. Both the vaccines were authorized for “restricted use in emergency situation”. So far India has approved eight vaccines.

Current Vaccines used

COVISHIELD of Serum Institute of Technology, COVAXIN of Bharat Biotech and Sputnik V of Russia are being used currently.

Other Approved vaccines

• ZyCoV – D of Cadilla. It is the first DNA vaccine against COVID-19.
• Moderna vaccine. It is a two-dose vaccine. It uses genetic code of messenger RNA.
• Johnson and Johnson vaccine. It is a single dose vaccine.
• Corbevax of Biological E. It is a two dose vaccine, It was designed using similar technology used to develop Hepatitis B.
• Covovax of American biotechnology