India 2nd fastest vaccinating nation, with over 1 cr. doses given

New Delhi, Feb. 19 (IANS): India has crossed a significant milestone in immunisation against Covid-19 with than 10 million people having been vaccinated, as of Friday, officials said.

“In the fight against the global pandemic, as on February 19, till 8 a.m., the cumulative vaccine doses administered to healthcare and frontline workers against Covid-19 in the country have surpassed 1 crore,” the Health and Family Welfare Ministry said.

The country took 34 days to achieve the landmark feat of 1 crore vaccinations, which, the ministry claimed, is the second fastest in the world.

“A total of 1,01,88,007 vaccine doses have been administered through 2,11,462 sessions, as per the provisional report till 8 a.m. today. These include 62,60,242 HCWs (1st dose), 6,10,899 HCWs (2nd dose) and 33,16,866 FLWs (1st dose),” it added.

The nationwide immunisation drive against Covid-19 was started on January 16 with two vaccines — Covishield by the Serum institute of India and Covaxin by Bharat Biotech — which were given emergency use authorisation by India’s drug regulator.

The drive started with vaccination planned for around 1 crore healthcare workers first followed by 2 crore frontline workers (FLWs) who registered as vaccine beneficiaries.

The 2nd dose of vaccination started on February 13 for those beneficiaries who have completed 28 days after receipt of the 1st dose. Vaccination of the FLWs started on February 2.

“Till day 34 of the vaccination drive (February 18), total 6,58,674 vaccine doses were given. Of which, 4,16,942 beneficiaries were vaccinated across 10,812 sessions for 1st dose (HCWs and FLWs) and 2,41,732 HCWs received 2nd dose of vaccine,” the Health Ministry said.

It also said that eight states have accounted for 57.47 per cent of the total vaccinations. Uttar Pradesh tops the chart, with 10.5 per cent (10,70,895) of the vaccination alone.

Meanwhile, seven states account for 60.85 per cent of the second vaccine doses administered in India. Telangana leads all the states with a 12 per cent share of second doses (73,281 beneficiaries) administered in the country, it said.

Besides, 16 states/UTs have not reported any Covid deaths in the last 24 hours. These are Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Puducherry, Chandigarh, Manipur, Mizoram, Lakshadweep, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Daman and Diu, as per the information released by the Health Ministry.

Fifteen states/UTs reported 1-5 deaths and 3 states/UTs reported deaths between 6 to 10 deaths in the same duration.

A total of 13,193 new cases and 97 fatalities due to Covid-19 have been recorded in the country in the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry had said on Friday morning.