India administers 64.25L vaccine doses in 24 hours
The Centre on Sunday said India’s Covid-19 vaccination coverage has crossed 32 crore as 64.25 lakh vaccine doses were administered in the last
24 hours. The Union health ministry said more than 1.15 crore doses are still available with the states/UTs to be administered and 20.49 lakh more doses are in the pipeline and will be received by the states/UTs in the next three days.
“The vaccination drive has been ramped up through the availability of more vaccines, advance visibility of vaccine availability to states and UTs for enabling better planning by them and streamlining the vaccine supply chain,” the health ministry said. So far only
5.6 per cent of India’s adult population has received two doses of the anti-Covid vaccines.
India reported 50,040 new cases and 1,258 deaths in the last 24 hours. Dr N.K. Arora, chairman of the Covid-19 working group, said that the government plans to administer one crore doses every day. “The Indian Council of Medical Research has come up with a study which says a third wave is likely to come late. We have a window of around
6-8 months to immunise everybody in the country… the trial for Zydus Cadila vaccine is almost complete. By the end of July or in August, we might be able to start administering this vaccine to children of the 1218 age group,” Dr Arora said. Health experts feel the vaccination of children will pave the way for the reopening of schools.
The Centre in an affidavit to the Supreme Court Saturday, said it expects to get around 188 crore vaccine doses from at least five manufacturers to be able to vaccinate the entire adult population of India by December. “The total population above 18 is approximately 93-94 crores. As such, administering two doses to these beneficiaries will require an estimated 186 to 188 crore vaccine doses. Out of this requirement, 51.6 crore doses will be made available for administration by July 31, leaving a requirement of approximately 135 crore vaccine doses for complete vaccination to the eligible population,” the Centre said in its affidavit.