COVID-19 Vaccination in Paediatric Population of India: Current Status, Trends, Challenges and Recommendations

Abstract

Paediatric population is the high-risk segment for the infection of COVID-19 due to weak immune status and low compliance to COVID-19 prevention protocols. The first dose of vaccination for the paediatric population is started in the fifth phase of vaccination, after the vaccination was administered to health workers, elderly individuals, and young adults. Present article aims to analyse the status, trends, and challenges in the implementation of the paediatric vaccination for COVID-19 and provide recommendations that could be taken under consideration by healthcare authorities while designing the second and third vaccination protocols for the paediatric population. Relevant articles published by various journals related to paediatric COVID-19 vaccination were searched from the different databases and analysed for the current status of vaccination, trends, challenges, compliance level, implementation hurdles, and other relevant information. Limited research is available in the paediatric domain for the COVID-19 vaccination. Few vaccines are approved for the paediatric population in India, including the Covaxin, ZyCoV-D, Corbevax and Covovax. It is recommended that the vaccination trials should be accelerated by the government agencies to make COVID vaccines available from other indigenous manufacturers. It is also recommended that the COVID-19 prevention protocol should be made in such a manner that children find that interesting and like to follow them.