India hurries teacher vaccinations as some physical classes resume

NEW DELHI: India will supply millions of additional COVID-19 vaccine doses to its states to try to inoculate all school teachers by early next month, the health minister said on Wednesday, as the country gradually resumes physical classes.

The pandemic has hit the country of 1.35 billion people particularly hard and hundreds of millions of its students have been stuck at home for months, with little or no access to online education for a majority of the poor. India last week approved its first COVID-19 vaccine for older children and is trying to urgently immunise all of its nearly 10 million school teachers. The country has been vaccinating its adults since the middle of January.