Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
India ranks number one in the world in administering the Covid vaccine doses.
By the time you are reading this India would have administered 2 billion, or 2000 million or 200 crore doses of the Covid vaccine to eligible citizens. If you discount China whose data is neither transparent nor credible, India ranks number one in the world in administering the Covid vaccine doses. The United States comes a distant second with 599 million doses. With a population of 1.4 billion, the Indian effort and achievement in administering vaccine doses is a remarkable feat by any yardstick. Do remember, India is still a poor country with a per capita income of $ 2000 a year while the United States boasts of a per capita income of $ 69,000. Keeping that perspective in mind, India administering 2 billion vaccine doses, most of it free of cost is something even critics of the current regime will have to grudgingly acknowledge and admire. One must also not ignore another vital data set: since April, 2020, the government has provided free food grains to 800 million Indians month after month.
As the accompanying chart shows, virtually all the major states of India, irrespective of which party is in power, have done a remarkable job despite various constraints ranging from accessibility to remote interiors to managing storage facilities efficiently to ensure that the vaccines did not go waste. As expected, Uttar Pradesh leads the pack with a total number of 343.94 million doses. After all, it is the most populous state in the country. The second most populous state of the country Maharashtra comes second with 170.36 million doses administered to citizens. These numbers have been updated till July 16, 2022. Another big advantage India enjoyed was the lack of vaccine hesitancy. C Voter had conducted a nationwide survey in late 2021 and 98% of the respondents had said they had already taken a dose or were willing to take one. Perhaps the only sobering news, as mentioned in a previous India Tracker story is the slow pace of administering booster doses. Just about 50 million booster doses had been administered by the first week of July. However, the government has launched a 75-day drive that offers a free booster dose to all eligible citizens. It is expected that the number of citizens taking booster doses will shoot up now that it has been made free for 75 days.
While Indians celebrate this important milestone, the situation was grim and tragic in the summer of 2021 when India has hit hard by the second wave of the Covid pandemic. Back then, many Indian and global researchers and medical experts had claimed that it would take 10 years for India to administer vaccines to all eligible citizens. In this case, at least the skeptics have proven wrong.
