India stands fifth in the world after inoculating more than 20,00,000 people till January 26, even as it has vaccinated for only 11 days compared with most other countries that launched vaccines in December and have been running their drive for around 50 days, the government said. The US topped the list with 23.5 million people vaccinated till Jan 26, followed by UK (7.6 million), Israel (4.2 million) and UAE (2.8 million). In India, a total of 28,47,608 people have been immunised till Thursday. It was also the fastest country to vaccinate one million people in merely six days, while the US took 10 days, Spain 12, Israel 14, the UK 18, Italy 19, Germany 20 and UAE 27 days.
The government plans to inoculate 30 million health and frontline workers in the first round that is expected to be completed by March-April. In the next round, priority population group comprising of people above 50 years of age and those younger but with co-morbidities will get the vaccine. Daily new cases of infection and active caseload in the country is also witnessing a declining trend, whereas various other countries have witnessed multiple peaks.
“Western countries have witnessed multiple peaks. Therefore, there is a need to be continuously be on guard and adopt Covid-appropriate behaviour,” health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said. Currently, active cases of Covid-19 in India are less than 170,000, whereas daily number of deaths have come down to less than 125 after eight months. Cumulative positivity rate was 5.5%.
Delhi, TN & Maha at bottom
: Even as vaccination sessions against Covid-19 and coverage of recipients are increasing gradually, some states are yet to pick up pace. States like Jharkhand, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra have reported low coverage with only 14-20.6% of total healthcare workers identified in these states vaccinated so far, health ministry data shows.
“We are in touch with these states and evaluating options to see how the vaccination numbers can be increased,” Bhushan said. However, 11 states including Odisha, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have vaccinated more than 35% of their health workers so far.
The overall vaccination progress in the country has also improved significantly and rapidly since its launch on January 16. Despite fluctuations in daily number of vaccinations and sessions organised across the country depending on number of states vaccinating on a particular day, there have been up to 7,764 sessions conducted on a day, data shows. In fact, on Thursday last, 4,91,615 people were vaccinated across 9,994 sessions organised in 37 states.
India had rolled out the drive with 3,374 sessions on January 16. To ensure full utilisation of resources and expedite the drive, the government has also allowed flexibilities such as allowing walk-in vaccinations for eligible beneficiaries who are pre-registered, even if they are not scheduled for a particular session. Similarly, states have also been given the liberty to increase the number of sessions for a day. Apart from this, large hospitals have also been allowed to organise multiple sessions simultaneously to ensure maximum number of beneficiaries can be inoculated every day.
