Over 8 million Covid vaccine doses given on Day 1 of new drive

West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh did not start the drive citing shortage of vaccines. Madhya Pradesh led the drive by administering 1,542,632 doses

As India kicked off its universal Covid vaccination drive on Monday, 8,095,314 doses were given in states and Union Territories during the day, even as many states admitted this would be difficult to sustain.

A medical worker administers a dose of Covid-19 vaccine to a beneficiary at a camp in Amritsar, Punjab on June 20. (HT file)

During May, more than 79 million vaccines were available for vaccination. These were ramped up to 117.8 million vaccine doses in June. These include the free supply of vaccines to states and UTs from Government of India, those directly procured by the states/UTs and those directly procured by the private hospitals.

West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh did not start the drive citing shortage of vaccines. Madhya Pradesh led the drive by administering 1,542,632 doses while Karnataka gave 1,067,734 doses during the day.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday released a white paper on the Centre’s Covid management and urged the government to prepare for the third wave of coronavirus.

Releasing the document, the former Congress chief said it is clear that the management of the first and second wave of Covid-19 was “disastrous”. “There were certain reasons as to why it was disastrous, we’ve tried to point out those reasons in our white paper. This is a blueprint about how to react to the third wave which is going to come,” he said.