‘India administers 10 million vaccine doses, second quickest drive in world’

NEW DELHI: India has delivered more than 10 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, the government said on Friday, describing it as the secondquickest campaign in the world.

India began inoculating people to fight the pandemic on January 16 and was administering doses at the fastest pace for weeks, before lingering hesitancy among some people and technical glitches meant the pace was overtaken by the

United States. “India has administered over 1 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccine to its health workers and frontline workers. It has been done in 34 days, which is the second fastest in the whole world,” said union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan.

As per the government’s provisional data, 10.44 million doses had been administered by Friday evening. But not all health workers who signed up having taken doses, prompting the government to renew appeals for them to come forward, a day before the window is meant to close for them.

“Both the vaccines are safe and immunogenic. There have been no serious or sever acute events following immunisation in the whole country. No death has been attributed to the vaccination. I would like to appeal to the medical professionals to get the vaccine,” said Dr Harsh Vardhan.

Twelve states and union territories have vaccinated over 75% of all the healthcare workers who had been registered on the government’s CO-WIN portal. Topping the list is Bihar with 84.7% coverage, followed by Tripura with 82.9%, and Odisha with 81.8%.