Continue taking precautions even after vaccine: TS Health officials

Individuals must have to continue taking precautions like wearing mask, sanitising hand and keeping physical distance even after the arrival of the vaccines, health officials said

Hyderabad: The health officials on Wednesday said the Covid-19 vaccines, expected to be made available in the coming months, were not meant for all individuals. “As the Centre has indicated, Covid-19 vaccine is not meant for healthy individuals. In the first phase, the healthcare workers from government and private institutions will be covered and in subsequent phases, vulnerable groups like persons above 50 years with comorbid conditions and senior citizens will be covered,” Director of Public Health, Dr G Srinivasa Rao said.

Individuals must have to continue taking precautions like wearing mask, sanitising hand and keeping physical distance even after the arrival of the vaccines, health officials said. “After inoculation, individuals will not start developing antibodies against Covid-19 immediately. It will take at least a month or two and more doses of the vaccine to boost the immunity so that it can develop antibodies against Covid-19. So it will be a long process and till then, all individuals have to follow Covid guidelines,” DME Dr Ramesh Reddy said.

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Reopening of medical colleges

On reopening of teaching hospitals keeping in view resumption of academic activities for MBBS students across all the medical colleges, health officials said teething issues were making it difficult to a take firm call. “The National Medical Commission recently issued guidelines to be followed by medical colleges to restart academic activities. Some of the guidelines like providing seperate study rooms for individual MBBS and PG students are extremely difficult to fulfil.

Talks with Parents

In the last few months, we have been interacting with parents of the MBBS students, who have indicated that they would be comfortable sending their child to medical colleges once there is availability of vaccines. So we have to wait for some more days to take a firm call on reopening of medical colleges,” Dr Ramesh Reddy said.

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