India nears vaccine milestone: At least one jab to 50% adults

A little over seven months since the day India launched its Covid-19 vaccination drive on January 16, the mass inoculation programme is closing in on a major milestone, with nearly half the country’s adult population receiving at least one shot of the vaccine.

On several fronts, the drive has seen progress – the pace of vaccination has picked up in recent weeks; India’s overall population coverage is now on par with the global average. But data shows that there is still a long way to go if India wants to achieve its stated target of vaccinating its entire adult population of 940 million by the end of 2021.

Till Wednesday night, India has administered 602.4 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to 465.7 million people with 329 million people partially vaccinated and 126.7 million people having received both doses of the vaccine. When seen alongside the country’s projected adult population of 940 million (according to the Census of India’s National Commission on Population), this means that 49.5% of people above the age of 18 years have received vaccine shots – 35% have been partially vaccinated and 14.5% having received both doses.

The proportion is likely to cross the 50% mark as early as Thursday.

The headline number on population coverage, however,

glosses over the wide variations in different states.

While Himachal Pradesh is the standout in terms of administering doses to the largest proportion of its adults (97% with at least one shot), it is followed by Uttarakhand (75.3% adults vaccinated with at least one shot) and

Kerala (74.2%). Delhi, with 60.4% of estimated adult population having received at least one dose of the vaccine, lies above the national average. At the other end, several high population states such as West Bengal (37.3%), Uttar Pradesh (37.6%),