India crossed a significant landmark in its Covid vaccination drive by administering 904 million doses till Saturday evening.
More than 72,00,000 doses were administered till 9:30 pm on Saturday, with Bihar taking the lead by pushing 264.10,000 jabs in a single day. Maharashtra, which inoculated the second-highest number of people, trailed Bihar with a much lesser count of 754,000 doses.
India’s average daily vaccinations has increased substantially in September to just over 79,00,000 doses/day (up from 59,19,000/day in August), as more than 10 million doses were administered on four separate days including 25 million on September 17. The daily average, however, dropped slightly last week (September 25-October 1) to 68,84,000 doses/day from 76,14,000 doses/day in the September 18-24 week.
The first-dose coverage of the country’s adult population has also increased significantly to around 70% of the estimated 940 million people aged18 and above. So far, 26% of the adult population has received both doses. The government aims to increase the first-dose coverage of the adult population to at least 80-85% by end of October.
While more than 52.8 million doses of unutilised anti-Covid jabs were available with the states and Union territories till Saturday morning, officials are expecting supplies to improve further over the next few weeks.
