India’s Covid-19 vaccination drive, which began on January 16, is approaching a major milestone, with nearly half of the country’s adult population receiving at least one shot of the vaccine.
The drive has made progress on several fronts: vaccination rates have increased in recent weeks, and India’s overall population coverage is now comparable to the global average. However, data shows that India still has a long way to go to reach its stated goal of vaccinating its entire adult population of 940 million people by the end of 2021.
India has given 602.4 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to 465.7 million people as of Wednesday night, with 329 million people receiving only one dose and 126.7 million receiving both doses. When compared to India’s projected adult population of 940 million (according to the National Commission on Population of the Census of India), this means that 49.5 percent of people over the age of 18 have received vaccine shots, with 35 percent receiving only a partial vaccine and 14.5 percent receiving both doses.
It’s possible that the percentage will reach 50% as early as Thursday.
The headline figure for population coverage, on the other hand, ignores the wide variations in coverage across states.
While Himachal Pradesh stands out in terms of administering doses to the greatest number of adults (97 percent), Uttarakhand (75.3 percent adults vaccinated with at least one shot) and Kerala (75.3 percent adults vaccinated with at least one shot) follow closely behind (74.2 percent ). Delhi is above the national average, with 60.4 percent of the estimated adult population having received at least one dose of the vaccine. On the other hand, several high-population states, such as West Bengal (37.3%), Uttar Pradesh (37.6%), and Bihar (38%) lag far behind the pack.
The achievement comes at a time when the country’s previously patchy vaccination rate has finally reached a high gear. Every day in the last week, an average of 5.2 million doses were given out across the country. While this number is still slightly below the peak reached in the week ending June 26 when the rate of vaccination reached 6.4 million per day, it has remained in the 4.9 million-5.5 million range for almost the entire month of August, which is a significant improvement for the drive, which had consistently remained in the sub-2 million range for most of May.
According to data, the country needs to double its current vaccination rate by the end of the year in order to fully vaccinate all adults by the end of December, as the government promised in a Supreme Court submission. To meet this goal, India needed to administer around 1.88 billion doses by the end of the year. Because 602 million of these have already been given out, that leaves 1.28 billion doses to be given out in the remaining 128 days of the year, or 10 million doses per day – a feat that has yet to be accomplished on a single day.
