Vaccination drive slows amid supply issues Dip in vaccinations
As many as 2,012,723 new doses of the vaccines against Covid-19 were administered on Wednesday. India needs to accelerate the speed of vaccinations in order to arrest the relentless second wave of the pandemic.
Vaccinating everyone quickly can halt the speed of the second wave of Covid-19 in India. Instead, India’s vaccination drive is deaccelerating. At 1.81 million doses, the seven-day average of new doses administered was the lowest on May 4 since the drive was expanded to include everyone aged 45 and above on April 1.
The drive so far
In the four phases of the vaccination drive so far, health care and frontline workers were covered in the first between Jan 16 and Feb 28; all those over the age of 60 years or those over 45 with comorbidities were vaccinated through March; those over 45 were eligible for the doses in the third phase from April 1; and everyone aged 18 years and above is eligible in the current phase which started on May 1.
Average doses
The number of doses administered rose towards the end of second phase with the highest average vaccination rate registered at 2.26 million doses on March 27. The highest rate of vaccination in the third phase was in the week ending April 12, when 4.17 million doses were given per day. The average in the week ending April 4 – 1.81 million doses per day – is lower than the peak of 2nd phase.
Focus on second doses
To be sure, the second doses are driving the vaccination numbers in the current phase, which implies that new people are not being covered. For the 63 days from March 1 to May 2 -- for which the weekly average of new first doses is available -- the week ending May 2 was ranked 57th in terms of number of first doses administered on average during the week (0.47 million)
Vaccine distribution
Of the total vaccinations in the country, 99,442,430 people have received only the first dose while 31,494,199 people have received both doses. Maharashtra has administered the highest number of doses, 16,793,770 doses, of which 269,882 were administered on Wednesday. Several states have complained of shortage in supply of vaccine doses for the slow pace of vaccinations.