"Vaccine 1st Dose Was Essentially A Booster": Top Medical Expert To NDTV

Dr Muliyil, an epidemiologist with the IMCR, also said boosters - offered from Monday to frontline workers and people over 60 with comorbidities - would make little or no difference in protecting against Omicron

In India the first dose of the Covid vaccine - rolled out from January 16 last year amid concerns over delays in vaccination - was "essentially a booster", Dr Jayaprakash Muliyil of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), the government's nodal body in this health crisis, told NDTV on Tuesday.

Dr Muliyil argued that natural immunity - acquired as the body develops antibodies to fight off the initial infection - could be lifelong in the case of Indians, and that "most (people) had been infected anyway", since India's vaccination drive had begun later than other countries.

''... in India more than 85 per cent got infected before the vaccine arrived. So, the first dose of vaccine most people received... whether they knew they were infected or not... that was a booster dose. Primary exposure was to the virus, right? That is the majority of Indians. Right? So, in India, a booster dose was already delivered... the first dose of the vaccine," he told NDTV.

Dr Muliyil, an epidemiologist, also said he was unsure about the need for booster doses at all.