Anurag Kundu, the chairperson of the Delhi Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR), has written to the Union health secretary, recommending that pregnant and lactating women be vaccinated as well.
They are currently exempt from the Covid-19 vaccination campaign due to a lack of clinical trial evidence on the vaccine's effect on them. The DCPCR has recommended that the government classify pregnant and lactating mothers as high-risk groups and develop a register for their vaccination so that a continuous surveillance system can be established to see if any adverse effects occur.
In his letter, Kundu wrote, “Each year, 2.6 crore women deliver children...add another 2.6 lactating mothers and we have close to 5.2 crore women left out of the programme. Clearly, this is a critical population, both in number and vulnerability.”
“India administers a different set of vaccines and not the MRNA ones on which the CDC data is based. So, the impact of the vaccines here is still not known due to lack of clinical trial data,” Kundu said. DCPCR has advised the government to form a working committee to look into the matter.
Kundu added that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers pregnant women to be“at increased risk of severe illness from Covid-19 when compared with non-pregnant people”, and has advised them to get vaccinated.
