Patna: ‘Teachers & pupils should be vaccinated on priority’

PATNA: Even as the academics, in general, have welcomed the vaccination drive against Covid-19, some do have apprehensions about its side effects, especially on senior citizens. The report of deaths of some senior citizens after getting vaccinated in some countries has made them all the more apprehensive.

Patna University (PU) English department’s former head Shiva Jatan Thakur welcomed the vaccination drive but said proper post-vaccination care must be observed effectively so that any case of emergency can be handled with efficacy. He opined that people in the age-group of 50-65 should get preference in getting vaccinated. People above 65 should be vaccinated only when the efficacy of all Covid-19 vaccines is well established. State’s former higher education director Nageshwar Prasad Sharma, who is above 90, however, ruled out the apprehensions and observed that no medicine is equally effective for all the people. “Both the vaccines launched in our country have been produced by reputed institutions after clinical trials and, hence, there should not be any doubt about their efficacy. Whenever I get the opportunity, I shall get myself vaccinated,” Sharma said.

PU botany department’s head Mahesh Prasad Trivedi observed that teachers as well as students are at greater risk of getting infected as the educational institutions in the state have already reopened. He said some separate medical teams should be constituted for vaccinating the students and teachers on priority basis. B N College principal Raj Kishore Prasad welcomed the grand launch of the Corona vaccine, but regretted that teachers, who interact with hundreds of pupils of all sorts every day, are not considered as frontline warriors. He demanded that all teachers, right from primary school to university level, should be vaccinated as early as possible.

Some academics would, however, prefer to wait for their turn silently as they wanted to be sure about the usefulness of the vaccine. “ Will the vaccines offer meaningful protection to seniors who are frail or have multiple chronic illnesses? What side effects can older adults anticipate and how often will these occur,” asked Patna College’s former principal Nawal Kishore Chaudhary.