Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 21: India crossed a major milestone on Thursday achieving one billion (100 Crore) COVID-19 vaccinations.
In a tweet, the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya congratulated the country on achieving the feat, and said it was the result of the able leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
According to official sources, around 75% of India’s all eligible adult population has been administered at least the first dose and around 31% has received both the doses of the vaccine. The government wants all of India’s 944 million adults to get vaccinated this year.
The Prime Minister who visited the RML hospital in Delhi to mark the milestone, congratulated the country and called it “the triumph of Indian science, enterprise and collective spirit of 130 crore Indians.” He said, “The country now has a strong protective shield of 100 crore vaccine doses to combat the biggest pandemic in 100 years,” he said.
Wishes poured in for India from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the leadership of Bhutan and Sri Lanka after it scripted history. Taking to Twitter, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus congratulated Modi, scientists, health workers and people of India on their “efforts to protect the vulnerable populations from COVID-19 and achieve vaccine equity targets.” The WHO Regional Director, South-East Asia, Poonam Khetrapal Singh said this “extraordinary feat” was not possible in a short span without “strong political leadership, inter-sectoral convergence, dedicated efforts of the entire health & frontline workforce.”
Bhutan’s Prime Minister Dr. Lotay Tshering said the feat was a “huge accomplishment” not just for India, but the world.
VK Paul, NITI Aayog member and chief of the government’s vaccine panel, said it was remarkable to reach the 1 billion dose mark in just over nine months since the vaccination program started in India. Dr Paul, stressing the need for consistency, pointed out that even though the first dose has been given to over 75 percent of adults, 25 percent remain unvaccinated.
The five states that have administered the highest number of doses are Uttar Pradesh, followed by Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh.
Daily vaccine shots have averaged 5 million this month, a fifth of September’s peak, though states are sitting on record stocks of more than 100 million as the domestic output of Serum Institute of India’s Covishield vaccine soars.
To celebrate the record, the government plans announcements over loudspeakers on trains, planes, and ships. The Union Health Minister will launch a song by singer Kailash Kher. The largest national flag, the 225-foot-long monumental national flag made by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), which was unveiled earlier in Leh, was also put on display at Red Fort to celebrate 100 crore COVID-19 vaccinations. The tricolour made of Khadi, which weighs 1,400 kg, is 150 feet wide and weighing around 1,400 kg, was conceptualised to celebrate “Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav.”
India’s milestone comes months after a huge spike in cases in April and May, when more than 400,000 infections and 4,000 deaths were reported per day and the country’s health infrastructure was overwhelmed. Cases have now sharply fallen, with fewer than 15,000 infections per day, and most activity has returned to normal. Mumbai, where cases peaked in the second surge, recently reported zero deaths in a day for the first time since the pandemic began.
It took India just 281 days to administer 100 crore Covid vaccine. The pace at which the vaccinations were administered is unparalleled as it took India 32 years and 20 years to hit the 100-crore milestone for TB and polio immunisations respectively. In terms of absolute numbers, only India and China occupy the billion-doses club. And this won’t change as no other country has a population of similar size. According to Our World in Data’s vaccine tracker, India is at number two when it comes to the number of doses given. It is followed by the United States, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, France, Russia, and United Kingdom.
India took 85 days to touch the 10-crore vaccination mark after the mass vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16, 45 more days to cross the 20-crore mark and 29 more days to reach the 30-crore mark, according to the Union Health Ministry data.
The country took 24 days to reach the 40-crore mark from 30-crore doses and then 20 more days to surpass the 50 crore mark on August 6. It then took 76 days to go past the 100-crore mark.
As the cumulative vaccine doses administered in India surpassed the 100-crore mark, Mandaviya on Thursday launched a song and a film describing the efforts that went behind the launch of the world’s largest Covid inoculation programme. The Union Health minister launched the song and the film at the iconic Red Fort.
“Today India created history. It’s a story of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Sankalp’. 100 crore vaccine is a story of Atma Nirbhar Bharat,” Mandaviya said at the event. The song has been sung by singer Kailash Kher. The audio-visual film is about how the entire process of vaccination was initiated and what efforts it took to launch the world’s largest Covid inoculation programme. The film also thanks doctors, nurses and everyone else who contributed in the largest vaccination drive and made it a success.
So far, all adult people in nine states and union territories –Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Lakshadweep, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Dadra and Nagar Haveli — have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
A single-day rise of 18,454 fresh cases pushed India’s COVID-19 tally to 3,41,27,450, while the number of active infections rose to 1,78,831, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on October 21.
The death toll from the pandemic climbed to 4,52,811 with the addition of 160 fatalities, showed the data updated at 8 am.
The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been below 30,000 for 27 straight days and less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported for 116 consecutive days now.
India, according to the government, has administered five times more doses than Japan, nine times more than Germany, and ten times more than France. While it took 85 days to administer the first 10 crore doses, it completed the last 10 crore in just 19 days. According to the Health Ministry, the average doses per day have improved to 60 lakh after June 21, when the Centre took over the vaccine procurement and supply. It was earlier 18 lakh per day. India also has the highest speed of vaccination, administering 35 lakh doses per day, which is 22 lakh more than US and 28 lakh more than Japan.
But this dramatically changes when it is viewed against the percentage of the population covered. The United Arab Emirates leads the list of countries with 87.26 per cent of their population fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins University’s vaccine tracker. It is closely followed by other smaller countries such as Portugal, Malta, Singapore and Spain, which have all fully vaccinated more than 80 per cent of their population. China is 13th on the list with 74.97 per cent, even though it has fully vaccinated over 100 crore people. While India is below its neighbours Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, with only 20.55 per cent of the population fully vaccinated.