E-Paper
Covid-19: How India became the fastest country to vaccinate over 7 million people
The ministry of health and family welfare said that more than 7.4 million people have received the shots as of February 11, 2021, under the nationwide immunisation exercise.
India has become the fastest country in the world to achieve more than 7 million vaccinations against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), taking only 26 days to accomplish this feat. The ministry of health and family welfare announced the significant achievement on Thursday, saying it took 27 and 48 days respectively for the United States and the United Kingdom to reach the same figures.
The ministry said that more than 7.4 million people have received the shots as of February 11, 2021, under the nationwide immunisation exercise. Among Indian states, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan have recorded the most number of vaccinations in the past 27 days.
In early January, the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) approved Covishield, the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and University of Oxford, and manufactured by Pune-based Serum Institute of India. It also granted emergency authorisation to Covaxin, a vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech, for its use under certain circumstances as the vaccine is still undergoing Phase 3 trial.
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India kicked off vaccination drive on January 16 after conducting two dry runs across the country to understand the mechanisms and identify possible issues expected to be encountered. The goal was to vaccinate registered healthcare and frontline workers in the first phase of the immunisation drive. Senior doctors took Covid-19 vaccine to address any hesitancy towards vaccination and technical issues were resolved on priority to accelerate the world’s largest vaccination campaign.
Out of the 7.4 million vaccinations, around 5.8 million comprise healthcare workers and more than 1.6 million frontline workers. According to the health ministry, 13 states and Union territories have vaccinated over 65 per cent of their registered healthcare workers and Bihar leads the group with 79% of the registered healthcare workers vaccinated till date.
India is now poised to give the second dose of Covid-19 vaccine to the healthcare and frontline workers. The health ministry said that those who received the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine on January 16 will start getting their second and last dose starting Saturday.
