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Post an early end to the Indian Premier League (IPL) owing to the rampant second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic which breached even the bio-secure bubbles, the Indian cricketers will have a bit of a break before they board the flight to England. Notably, the Virat Kohli-led side is to take on New Zealand in the ICC World Test Championship final to be played at Southampton from June 18-22.
Meanwhile, India, which is now reporting over 400,000 new cases every day has already started mass drives of vaccination, with at least two doses being administered to each individual with a 28-45 days gap in between.
There were plans to vaccinate all IPL players
Notably, there were plans to vaccinate all the IPL players while the tournament was on but with the suspension of the T20 competition, that no longer remains possible. Thus, all the players now need to get vaccinated individually in their respective localities. However, it has been advised that the players should get a dose of the Covishield vaccine and not Covaxin.
This is because the cricketers have less than a month's time before they leave India and taking the second dose of the vaccine will not be possible in the given time frame. A person who takes Covaxin is supposed to get the second shot of the same but since Covishield is based on Oxford's AstraZeneca vaccine (a UK product), England bound India players are advised to take Covishield so that they can get the second dost during the England series.