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New Delhi (AFP) – India began on Monday a booster vaccination campaign against covid-19 for the elderly and health personnel, at a time when the pandemic is experiencing a meteoric increase attributable to the omicron variant.
The health personnel, in the first line of fire, have begun to be inoculated with a third dose of the vaccine, as well as the elderly and people with comorbidities.
“We have seen an increase in the number of cases today,” said Sheetal Vaishnav, a doctor involved in this vaccination campaign at a clinic in New Delhi.
“We needed to protect our people more. We are happy to do so now.” Almost 180,000 new infections have been registered in the last 24 hours, almost six times more than last week.
At the height of the pandemic, last May, India had recorded more than 400,000 new infections and 4,000 deaths a day.
No one in the giant South Asian country can forget the traumatic scenes in hospitals overflowing with dying patients, without oxygen, crematoria and cemeteries struggling to respond to the huge influx of corpses.
India now appears to be better prepared to resist omicron than it was last spring, when the delta variant killed more than 200,000 people in just a few weeks.
Since then, almost 1.5 billion doses have been administered, according to official data.
Adolescents over 15 years of age had access to vaccination as of last week.
This new campaign could help mitigate the impact of the omicron variant.
© 2022 AFP
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