Administered 900mn jabs so far: Mandaviya
NEW DELHI: India has administered 900 million Covid-19 vaccines so far, Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Saturday. This landmark number assumes significance as the government is aiming to vaccinate every adult individual by December 2021.
“Shastri ji gave the slogan ‘Jai Jawan - Jai Kisan’. Revered Atal ji added ‘Jai Vigyan’ and PM @Narendra Modi Ji gave the slogan ‘Jai Anusandhan’. Today the result of anusandhan is this corona vaccine.#JaiAnusandhan,” health minister Mandaviya tweeted.
The Union government is committed to accelerating the pace and expanding the scope of Covid-19 vaccination throughout the country, the health ministry said earlier in the day.
The vaccination drive has been ramped up through availability of more vaccines, advance visibility of vaccine availability to states and Union Territories for enabling better planning by them, and streamlining the vaccine supply chain, the ministry added.
The government on Saturday further informed that over 5.28 crore unutilised vaccine doses are still available with the states/UTs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the first phase of the nationwide Covid-19 vaccination drive on January 16 via video conferencing.
To ramp up the pace of vaccination, the government introduced the ‘new phase of universalisation’ of Covid-19 vaccination on June 21, 2021.
Under this drive, the Centre is procuring and supplying free of cost 75 per cent of the vaccines being produced by the vaccine manufacturers in the country to states and UTs.
India reported 24,354 new cases, taking the tally to 33,791,061, while the active cases declined to 273,889, according to the Union health ministry’s data updated on Saturday.