On Thursday, a seven-day rolling average of vaccinations in India revealed a troubling decrease for the seventh day, with the Health Ministry reporting that just 11.66 lakh people had received their vaccinations the day before, raising concerns regarding future outbreaks.
The rolling average number of vaccines was at 13.42 lakh on March 14, the lowest since the second outbreak of coronavirus outbreaks, which wreaked havoc on the country’s healthcare system and killed thousands.
Despite being the world’s vaccine production center, India has only been able to completely inoculate fewer than 3% of its population since the central government failed to put enough orders for shots last year, resulting in a global scramble.
Apart from making India one of the few countries in the world where vaccines are not free for all people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government suddenly shifted the majority of the responsibility to the states last month.
As the nation has become the only one in the world where the central government cannot procure any of the vaccines it needs, states have been forced to compete for vaccines, a strategy that has been strongly criticized.
The decisions have exacerbated a vaccine crisis, forcing the government to halt shipments, leaving developing countries reliant on India-made vaccines high and dry.
The government, which has been mocked by the opposition and the international media, revealed last week how it intended to obtain 200 crore doses of coronavirus vaccines by the end of the year, despite the fact that nearly all states in the country are experiencing supply shortages.
According to internal estimates shared by two outlets, India’s production of COVID-19 shots for August-December is likely to be lower than the government’s public forecast, according to Reuters.
This will cause India’s plans to vaccinate all of its adults this year to be postponed, as the country expects another outbreak of coronavirus infections in the winter. For months, India has been the world’s hardest hit by the pandemic, with a recent strain fueling up to 4 lakh new infections per day.
On Thursday, the country recorded 2.76 lakh new regular infections, bringing the total to 2.57 crore, second highest in the world after the United States, with official deaths at 2,87,122, according to health ministry statistics.
According to Reuters, only the United States has had a higher single-day death toll, with 5,444 people killed on February 12.
