- Sunday, May 19, 2024
By: Pramod Kumar
INDIA’s health ministry on Tuesday (17) said that the country administered more than 8.8 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the past 24 hours.
The new figure is close to its all-time record and speeding up a campaign to inoculate all eligible adults by December.
The country hit a record high of 9.2m doses on June 21.
The surge in inoculations came alongside a sharp decline in daily new infections that fell to 25,166, the lowest since March 16, the health ministry said.
India has undertaken one of the world’s largest Covid-19 vaccination drives and has so far administered 554m doses, giving at least one dose to about 46 per cent of its estimated 944m adults. Only about 13 per cent of the population have had the required two doses.
After June 21, the pace of daily inoculations had dropped to around 4.2m on an average in July, according to data compiled from the government’s CoWIN website.
In the first two weeks of August, India administered about 5m doses on an average everyday.
Experts have said India needs to administer 10m doses a day to achieve its aim of inoculating all adults by December.
“For each day we fall short of it, the required target goes further up,” said Rijo John, health economist, and a professor at the Rajagiri College of Social Sciences in the southern city of Kochi.
“Realistically, I do not think we will be able to cover all adults fully by this year’s end.”
India’s overall Covid-19 caseload on Tuesday reached 32.25m, the second-highest globally behind the US. The country reported 437 deaths over the last 24 hours, taking the toll to 432,079, the government said.
