India on Wednesday crossed the 60-crore mark for Covid-19 vaccinations. China is the only country ahead of us in vaccinating its population. It has administered 1.98 billion doses, fully vaccinating over 50% of its population, says the dataset available from ‘Our World in Data’ statistical website.
Though the number of people vaccinated has increased in India, we don’t have much to cheer about. The pace of vaccination has not increased as India took almost the same amount of time to reach the 60 crore mark from 50 crore — 19 days — as it did to reach from 40 crore to 50 crore — 20 days.
A look at the interval between each 10 crore dose administered in India showed good progress. The first 10 crore doses were administered in 85 days, the next in 45, almost in half of the time required for the first milestone. The next 10 crore doses, taking us to the 30-crore doses mark — took 29 days. The progress then slowed down during the next three ‘10 crore’ milestones. The country took 24 days to administer the next 10 crore doses to reach the 40 crore milestone, 20 days to reach the 50 crore milestone and just a day less or 19 days to reach to reach the last 10 crore doses.
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Given India’s massive population base and disastrous second wave, we needed to significantly scale up the vaccination process before the third Covid-19 wave hits. Authorities have said that India will reach a possible target of 1 crore vaccinations daily with a target of around 25 crore vaccinations for August. Dr NK Arora, the chairman of the Covid-19 working group under the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, had assured on May 31 that around 25 crore vaccine doses are likely to be supplied in August with the daily target of 1 crore vaccinations per day.
India needs to scale up its vaccination process significantly as a completely vaccinated population is the only solution to fight the pandemic. Studies have shown that only complete Covid vaccination makes an individual capable of fighting the virus effectively.
As per the dataset available from Health Ministry’s Co-WIN website, as of Wednesday, India has administered 60,23,42,536 Covid vaccine doses. Out of this, just 13,56,42,029 individuals are fully vaccinated. So, we have most of the country still vulnerable when India hits the next Covid wave next month onwards as different forecasts suggest. Predictions on the third wave say that daily cases can go up to as high as 6 lakh a day.
By August 25, the country was able to fully vaccinate just 10% of its overall population or 14.4% of the adult population base, while 33,10,58,478 individuals still need the second dose. That means over 89 crore Indians are still unvaccinated.
A panel from the National Institute of Disaster Management, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, has in fact warned on the slow pace of vaccination in the country, saying that with this pace of vaccination, the daily cases may go up to six lakh a day if the third Covid wave hits the country.
The 25 days of August has seen the daily Covid vaccination rate going up by almost 22% so far when compared to data from July. A total of 13,45,82,577 jabs were administered in July, that is, an average of 43,41,373 doses per day, a 12.5% increase against June’s 11,96,69,381 jabs.
The month of June, in fact, saw a massive increase of 96% over May when the vaccination drive was opened for all adult individuals of the country. May saw 6,10,57,003 vaccine doses administered, or on an average 19,69,580 a day.
After 222 days of vaccination since January 16, when the vaccination drive began, our pace of vaccination, with an average of 27,13,254 daily doses, is much below the 1 crore daily vaccination target considered to be safe for a huge population like ours, as estimated in different government and private studies.
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