Bengaluru, Apr 9 (IANS): Administration of precautionary Covid dose is as important as first and second Covid-19 doses for protection against the deadly virus, Karnataka Health Minister K. Sudhakar said on Saturday.

Precautionary doses for Covid-19 vaccine will be available to everybody who belong to the 18+ age group at private vaccination centres from April 10.

Minister Sudhakar stated that the union government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focusing on precautions and accelerated the vaccination process in the country.

The precautionary dose of the vaccine can be taken by those who have completed 9 months or 39 weeks after the second dose of vaccination.

Currently, the first, second and precautionary dose of Covid-19 vaccine is already being given to healthcare workers, frontline workers, and persons who are above 60 years of age at the government vaccination centres. This will be accelerated further.

As per current statistics, Karnataka has administered a total of 10.47 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccine and the precautionary dose accounts for over 14 lakh. Among the total population eligible for the Precautionary dose around 57.6 per cent have been vaccinated.

For the first dose among the 18+ age group, Karnataka has administered over 4.97 crore doses of vaccine and has successfully completed administering the second dose of the vaccine to 4.76 crore people (97.4 per cent).

Additionally, the state has also administered 13,27,985 doses of Covid-19 vaccines to children aged between 12 and 14 years as a part of the first dose and the second dose for this age group will be started shortly.

Among 15-17 age group, Karnataka has successfully administered 5,23,05,424 (100.4 per cent) and 4,97,08,909 (95.4 per cent) first and second doses respectively.