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India crosses historic 1B COVID vaccine milestone
Thursday, overall coverage for India’s COVID-19 vaccination drive exceeded the 1 billion mark, marking a watershed moment.
According to the Cowin site at 9:47 am today, a total of 1 billion vaccination doses had been provided to eligible recipients.
The achievement was accomplished more than ten months after India’s COVID-19 vaccination programme began on January 16.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed it a “triumph of Indian science” in India’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic at the time.
For a country that had supply constraints and vaccine reluctance in the early stages, reaching the 1 billion mark is a significant accomplishment in and of itself.
Initially, the vaccine was exclusively available to Health Care Workers (HCWs). Front-line employees became eligible for vaccination on February 2.
State and Central Police officers, Armed Force members, Home Guards, Civil Defence & Disaster Management Volunteers, Municipal employees, Prison Staff, PRI Staff, and Revenue workers involved in confinement and surveillance, Railway Protection Force, and election staff were among those participating.
The vaccination campaign was expanded on March 1 to cover those over the age of 60 and those over the age of 45 who have one of the designated 20 comorbidities.
Rajiv Nath
President,
AISNMA
As India scripts history with India’s COVID-19 vaccination drive exceeding the 1 billion mark, we whole heartedly congratulate the Hon’ble PM, his team especially at MoH&FW as well as India’s countless healthcare workers, healthcare providers and Covid-19 vaccine logistics providers and all those who worked to achieve this noble feat.
teamwork and leadership can move mountains.
We are glad we could shoulder a small part of the responsibilities of providing the guns (syringes) needed to fire the bullets (vaccines) for India’s massive vaccination campaign. We feel humbled and honoured to have contributed and helped India administer 1 billion COVID vaccine doses by October.
We assure the government that we will always prioritize domestic needs. COVID-19 crisis has shown that the Indian Syringe manufacturers sector can rise to the challenge. Indian Syringe manufacturers extends full cooperation and support to GoI and will do whatever it needs to produce syringes ahead of schedule to ensure success of India’s massive vaccination campaign.
From April 1, it was extended to all adults above the age of 45.
COVID-19 vaccination became available to all adults over the age of 18 on May 1.
The figure is twice the amount of vaccinations provided in the United States, five times that of Japan, nine times that of Germany, and ten times that of France, according to the government in a presentation lauding the “vaccine century.”
The Centre recalled the journey to 1 billion vaccine doses in a presentation that detailed the milestones reached by the countrywide immunisation campaign from its inception on January 16, 2021.
It stated that CoWIN, the digital platform used to manage immunisation records, had so far enrolled 760 million beneficiaries.
It also stated that for the first time, India deployed drones to distribute vaccinations to remote areas of the country.
The country recorded 14,623 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday, in addition to 197 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
MB Bureau