India on course to deliver one billion Covid vaccinations: Why is it a big deal?

The number of COVID-19 vaccination doses delivered in India is set to surpass one billion.

India has already provided more vaccination doses than any other country in the globe, with the exception of China.

The billion-doses club would consist of only these two countries, as no other country has a population of anything close to 500 million.

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For a country that had supply constraints and vaccine reluctance in the early stages, reaching the 1 billion mark is a significant accomplishment in and of itself.

India faces logistical challenges in the delivery and storage of vaccinations, as well as in establishing a cold-chain network to distant locations where healthcare facilities are inadequate.

Add to that the fact that India was stricken by the pandemic's deadliest second wave as soon as the vaccines were made available to the general population, crippling the same health care system that was to be utilised for vaccine delivery.

Bloomberg's vaccination tracker, meanwhile, shows that just 20% of the country's 1.4 billion people are completely vaccinated.

Furthermore, the tracker indicated that 51% of individuals are only partially vaccinated.

Just 17 per cent to 25 per cent of the population in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are completely vaccinated, while more than 70 per cent have yet to receive their first shot.

For the past 25 days, there have been fewer than 30,000 daily COVID infections in the country. For the past 114 days, there have been fewer than 50,000 daily new cases reported.

In India, 13,058 new coronavirus infections were reported on October 19, the fewest in 231 days, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases to 3,40,94,373.

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The death toll rose to 4,52,454 with 164 new deaths, but the number of active cases fell to 1,83,118, the lowest in 227 days.

The active cases account for 0.54 percent of overall infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was 98.14 per cent, the greatest since March 2020, according to the health ministry.

Vaccine Maitri Programme

While India was vaccinating its citizens, it was not blind to the catastrophe unfolding in other nations. Earlier this year, India sent over 66 million doses of Covid vaccines to more than 70 nations as part of the Vaccine Maitri programme. Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Morocco, South Africa, Afghanistan, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom were among the countries that benefited from the Vaccine Maitri project.

India is the world's largest vaccine manufacturer and one of the largest contributors to the World Health Organization's COVAX programme, under which more affluent countries such as the United States where Covid vaccines are manufactured contribute to other countries to ensure equitable distribution of the vaccines.

(With inputs from agencies)