Friday, 17 May, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
India has crossed 219.41 crore as of 19th October 2022. Image Source: IANS
Considering the nearing expiry date of the vaccines, the central government has taken a decision of not procuring any more vaccines as of now
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has recently decided against procuring any more COVID-19 vaccinations as of now as it marked that the Central government’s vaccination programme is in its final stage. According to the officials of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the central government still has a stock of 3 crore vaccine doses to be administered. The officials further added that, “The government's COVID-19 vaccination program is in its final stages, but it's still not over, approx. 3 crore COVID-19 doses are still available with the government at the different centers and the stock is sufficient for a few months." The central government stated that even if the government’s stock of vaccines gets exhausted, the vaccines will be still available in the market as the private hospitals in the country have sufficient stock of vaccines and also they can directly procure the vaccines from the manufacturing companies.
Considering the central government’s decision of not procuring more COVID-19 vaccines, India Tracker takes a look at the current status of vaccination in the country and analyzes if the government’s decision is in keeping with the current situation of COVID in India or not.
Source: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
According to the latest figures released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in India has crossed 219.41 crore as of 19th October 2022.
The age group of 18-44 years has the maximum number of beneficiaries as 56,13,87,521 have received the first dose of vaccine and 51,61,99,730 have received the second dose. This shows that the number of people getting inoculated with the first dose of vaccine is more as compared to the people inoculated with the second dose. Coming over to the precaution dose or the third dose of vaccine, only 9,98,35,585 doses were administered. This shows a massive drop in the rate of vaccination as maximum people have turned their back to the precaution dose. The data clearly shows that there has been a drop in the number of precaution doses administered to the beneficiaries among different age groups. A little over 27% of the total eligible target population (18 years and older) have received precautionary doses so far. The precaution dose/ booster dose/ third dose is available only to the people 18 and above and not to the children between the age group of 12-17.
The Government of India has been assisting states and union territories by giving them free COVID-19 vaccinations as part of the statewide immunization programme, which got underway on January 16 of last year. Considering the nearing expiry date of the vaccines, the central government has taken a decision of not procuring any more vaccines as of now. Also, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has surrendered Rs 4,237.14 crore from its 2022-23 budget allocation of Rs 5,000 crore for inoculation purposes to the Ministry of Finance.
Indian healthcare and frontline workers, as well as people 60 years of age and older with comorbidities, started receiving precautionary vaccination doses from January 10. The country began immunizing children between the ages of 12 and 14. It also abolished the comorbidity clause, allowing anyone over 60 to receive the precautionary dose. On April 10, India started giving COVID-19 vaccination precaution doses to all adults over the age of 18.
Since there haven't been many COVID-19 cases, there hasn't been much of a demand for vaccines, even though the government ran a 75-day campaign called "COVID Vaccination Amrit Mahotsava" to provide booster shots to all adults at no cost.
Though the active caseload in India remains low at 25,968 and recovery rate currently standing at 98.76%, Omicron's new sub-variant BA.5.1.7 has become a new matter of worry among the healthcare professionals as it is highly infectious and has a rapid pace of transmission. The new variants of the virus tend to boost the number of people taking the precaution dose.
