For the first time in the country, the number of fully vaccinated individuals on Wednesday surpassed the partially vaccinated eligible population under the mass vaccination coverage.
As of Tuesday night, of the 755.4 million people who have received Covid-19 vaccine in India, 380.7 million people are fully vaccinated (have received both shots) and another 374.7 million have received only one shot, according to data from the CoWIN dashboard.
“This has been made possible due to the Prime Minister’s vision of “Jan-Bhagidari” and whole of Government approach, people’s faith and confidence in the Government, and the ongoing “Har Ghar Dastak” campaign which has seen tremendous response from various parts of the country,” said Dr Mansukh Mandaviya, Union Health Minister, here on Wednesday.
The Union Health Minister expressed confidence that the country will have vaccinated every Indian by the end of the month-long “Har Ghar Dastak” campaign. Healthcare workers are conducting door-to-door vaccinations of people across India with a special focus on districts where less than 50 per cent of the eligible population has been vaccinated.
According to data maintained by the website Our World in Data, on average, 54.1% of India’s population (the entire population, not just those above 18 years) has received at least one shot of the vaccine, while 26.8% are fully vaccinated. The global average for these figures is 52.2% and 40.9%, respectively. This means that while India leads the global average in total coverage, it is considerably behind in the proportion of people fully vaccinated.
The gap can be partly attributed to the revision of the prescribed gap between the two doses in the case of Serum Institute of India’s Covishield (a vaccine that accounts for nearly 90% of all doses administered in the country).
On May 13, the Union Health Ministry announced the widening of the gap between the doses of Covishield from 4-8 weeks to 12-16 weeks. The number of people who have been administered just one dose of the vaccine have been steadily dropping since the first week of October, data shows.
On Tuesday, Mandaviya stressed that the completion of the Covid-19 vaccination drive with 100 per cent administration of both the doses to India’s adults is an “immediate necessity.