{"id":39779,"date":"2021-08-24T17:04:30","date_gmt":"2021-08-24T11:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/vaccinating-children-against-covid-key-to-reach-herd-immunity-dak\/"},"modified":"2021-08-24T17:04:30","modified_gmt":"2021-08-24T11:34:30","slug":"vaccinating-children-against-covid-key-to-reach-herd-immunity-dak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=39779","title":{"rendered":"Vaccinating children against Covid key to reach herd immunity: DAK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Srinagar, Aug 24: <\/em><\/strong><em>Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Tuesday said vaccinating children against Covid holds key to reach herd immunity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWe cannot achieve herd immunity until children are vaccinated,\u201d said DAK President and influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cHerd immunity is achieved when most of the population in a community is immune to the disease so that the virus no longer spreads easily from person to person,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Dr Hassan said early in the pandemic, it was estimated that around 70 percent of people would need to be vaccinated to reach the threshold at which the virus would not freely circulate.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cBut the spread of more infectious Delta variant has pushed the threshold for herd immunity to well over 80 percent and potentially approaching 90 percent,\u201d he added.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cHerd immunity is unlikely to be achieved if children who constitute a significant proportion of the population are unvaccinated,\u201d Dr Hassan said.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThere are around 4.8 million children in Jammu and Kashmir, which represent 38.4 percent of JK\u2019s 1.25 crore population,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The DAK President said Covid-19 pandemic cannot be curbed until children are vaccinated.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018While children appear to face less danger of severe illness or death from Covid, they can still spread the virus,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cIf we leave children unvaccinated, we will continue to have fresh waves and pandemic will linger on.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Dr Nisar said Covid-19 vaccine is required for children to return to classrooms and is important for ensuring safe learning environment in schools.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cVaccinating children is crucial to avert third Covid wave which is predicted to happen sometime in the fall of this year and is expected to affect kids the most,\u201d he said<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u201cIndia has approved its first indigenous pediatric vaccine from Zydus Cadila for 12 years of age and above.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWhile trials for younger kids are on, they might have to wait for sometime before they will be included in the vaccination schedule,\u201d he added.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Srinagar, Aug 24: Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Tuesday said vaccinating children against Covid holds key to reach herd immunity. \u201cWe cannot achieve herd immunity until children are vaccinated,\u201d said DAK President and influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan. \u201cHerd immunity is achieved when most of the population in a community is immune to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39778,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}