Covid-19 Vaccines For Children - Treading With Care

Shreya Nangia, a 48-year-old mother of two in Gurugram, has not let her children out of their four-bedroom house since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in March 2020.

- Sonali Acharjee

Her daughters, aged 12 and 14, are both attending online counselling to work through the frustration and anger of being locked indoors for nearly 20 months. But Nangia says she cannot risk socialising them because the family also lives with her 86-year-old father, who is diabetic and a heart patient. “We have received special permission for the children to continue studies from home till they are vaccinated. It is very painful to see your own children suffer, but the risk to life outweighs that pain,” she says.

The family was overjoyed when, on August 20, 2021, plans to vaccinate children of 12-18 years were announced, with emergency use approval granted to Indian firm Zydus Cadilla’s Zycov-D, a needle-free DNA vaccine. However, two months on, with no further communication on when the vaccination process might begin, their eagerness has waned. Two months earlier, says Nangia, her kids would probably have been first in line for the shot, but now she is not so sure. “Is it safe? We keep reading news that trials for vaccines in children need more time and confirmation. And what about side-effects? There’s no clarity on that either,” she says.

Nangia is not alone. According to an online survey of 770 parents, done by researchers from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, and Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Puducherry, about 77 per cent respondents did not want to vaccinate their children. There are several reasons why—concerns about safety and effectiveness (86.4 per cent), side-effects (78.2 per cent), and the idea that children typically get milder versions of the disease and, therefore, do not need vaccination (52.8 per cent).