Soon, booster dose of Covid-19 vaccine for Indians travelling overseas

New Delhi: The Centre is mulling to rollout precautionary dose of Covid-19 vaccine for those travelling overseas for the purpose of education, employment, sports and for attending official or business commitments. 

The overseas-bound travellers are also likely to be required to pay for the booster dose at private clinics. 

Presently, healthcare, frontline workers and people aged above 60 are eligible for a precautionary jab of the Covid-19 vaccine.

The development comes amid scheduled international flights resuming from Sunday. As per PTI source,  the Ministry of External Affairs recently underlined travel restrictions being enforced by certain countries in view of the third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. 

"In view of these, the health ministry is actively considering to allow booster/precaution dose of COVID vaccine for those seeking to travel abroad for jobs, admission in foreign educational institutions, participating in sports tournaments, in bilateral, multilateral meetings as part of India's official delegation or for attending business commitments," an official source was quoted as saying by PTI. 

India had commenced administering precaution doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the healthcare and frontline workers and those aged 60 and above with comorbidities from January 10 this year. Later, the Center had allowed the booster dose for all those above 60. 

As per Union Health Ministry, India has so far administered over 182.87 crore vaccine doses to all categories of eligible beneficiaries. 

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