The new year comes with a whole lot of new hopes for the people of India. No, we are not repeating the COVID advisory caller-tune, but just reiterating an announcement by the government. A few days ago, the Government of India had announced that children aged between 15 and 18 will be eligible to get vaccinated for COVID.

Here, we explain everything that you should know about this.

Can children below the age of 18 be vaccinated in India?

On December 25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that children in the 15-18 age group could get their first round of COVID vaccines from January 3. He said that vaccinating children will help schools go back to normalcy.

Is India the first country that will be vaccinating people of this age group?

No. A lot of countries including the USA, UK, the UAE and multiple European countries have already done this.

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What vaccine will be administered?

They will either get two doses of Bharat Biotech's Covaxin or three doses of Zydus Cadila's ZyCoV-D, both of which have been cleared for kids over 12. While Serum Institute's Novavax and Biological E's Corbevax have been cleared for trials on children, neither have been cleared for use.

So how exactly can children register themselves to get vaccinated?

The drill is more or less the same. They can log on to CoWIN and register themselves from January 1, using government or even school ID cards. Based on the slots that they get, they can get vaccinated.