India administers two billion COVID-19 doses, achieves a milestone
India breaches the two billion Covid jab mark
India's ambitious mass vaccination program hit a major milestone on Sunday (July 17). Reportedly, according to Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data, India's cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage breached the two billion mark. 14,800 sites conducting vaccinations on Sunday helped reach the landmark. Over 1bn first doses have been administered while over 920 million second doses have been inoculated.
It is pertinent to note that India's vaccination program began on January 16 last year. Initially, only Oxford-AstraZeneca developed Covishield was used for the immunisation process before the government and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) approved indigenously developed Bharat Biotech's Covaxin vaccine.
It was in mid-September last year that the centre reached the milestone of 100 crore doses; 277 days after the immunisation drive began. Up until now, 87 per cent of the country's population has been completely inoculated.
To encourage the public to take the third shot, referred to as the Booster shot, the centre on Friday announced that all adults in the age group 18-75 will be able to receive free precaution dose at government Covid centres.The aforementioned campaign is being run as part of ‘COVID Vaccination Amrit Mahotsava’ as India gears to celebrate its 75th Independence Day.
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Such has been the effect of India's vaccination program that medical journal The Lancet released a report last month which revealed that 'Covid-19 vaccines prevented over 42 lakh potential deaths in India in 2021'.
"For India, we estimate that 42,10,000 deaths were prevented by vaccination in this period. This is our central estimate, with the uncertainty in this estimate ranging between 36,65,000-43,70,000," Oliver Watson, the lead author of the report was quoted as saying by news wire agency PTI.
India's vaccination drive has eclipsed that of several big, developed nations. Despite the caseload going up every few months, the rate of hospitalisation has been extremely low due to the vaccination programme.
(With inputs from agencies)
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