India’s vaccinations hit record as government provides free COVID jab for all adults
Day one of implementation of ‘Revised Guidelines for Covid Vaccination’ turned out to be a success for India as the country administered more jabs than the population of entire New Zealand within 9 hours.
As the Centre’s ‘Revised Guidelines for Covid Vaccination’ kickstarted today, in which all adults will be provided free anti-Covid jabs, the Union Health Ministry informed that more than 80 lakh vaccine doses were administered across the country till the evening.
It is the highest number of doses administered in a day since the vaccination drive started on January 16. India’s cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage is now nearly 28.7 crore.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the government would buy 75% of all vaccines from drug makers and distribute them for free to states, which along with private hospitals had earlier been buying shots for people aged 18-45.
With the peak of the second wave behind us, almost 90% of over 650 districts for which data is available, are now in a phase of steady decline. West Bengal is the only major state where active cases have increased in the last one week. The other two states — Manipur and Mizoram — have seen a rise in active cases, but in both these states, the number is well within 1,000.
Over the last 24 hours, India reported 53,256 infections, the lowest since March 24. Infections hit a peak of about 400,000 a day in May and deaths soared to around 170,000 in April-May.
Meanwhile, BJP national president JP Nadda said earlier today that India will have 257 crore Covid vaccine doses by December to take up double dose vaccination of people in full swing.
Experts have said India needs to administer 10 million doses a day to achieve its aim of inoculating 950 million adults by December. So far, India has fully vaccinated fewer than 5% with two doses.
