Congress and Trinamool Congress members in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday raised concerns over the looming threat posed by the Omicron variant of COVID-19, asking the government what it planned to do with regard to the variant, whether booster doses of the vaccines were to be given and when vaccination of children and adolescents could be expected.
Raising the issue during Zero Hour, leader of the Congress legislative party in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary, said that Omicron was a developing threat, and going by the arc of infections in the first and second wave of COVID-19, it could not be taken lightly. “I want to know when the government intends to make vaccines available to children and adolescents,” he said.
Echoing him, TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee said it was reported on Tuesday that one person in the U.K. had died due to Omicron infection. “I just want to know the measures taken by the Central Government to protect people from this disease, see to it that people come out of this disease, and that it does not spread at all”.
His party colleague and former Union Minister Saugata Roy said booster dose for COVID-19 should be started in the whole country immediately. “India has not started the booster dose because of some differences of opinion amongst the Expert Committee. Now, Omicron has entered India, and already the number of affected people... has come to 40. Maharashtra has two more Omicron cases. It is not easy to find whether a particular patient is infected with Omicron or not because of the problem in genome sequencing. Yesterday, in Maharashtra, two well-known film artistes, Karina Kapoor and Amrita Arora, have been affected by COVID-19, which is a matter of concern for all of us. Sir, I demand that the third dose or the booster dose should start immediately. Young people between 12 and 18 years of age, who have not received the COVID-19 vaccine so far, should also get the dose,” he said.
