A year on, India’s Covid vaccine coverage surpasses 150 crore. Mandaviya hails drive

As the country completed a year of administering vaccines to its citizens against the coronavirus disease that has disrupted life and livelihood of both poor and rich alike, Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Sunday hailed the inoculation campaign as the most successful one in the world.

Congratulating health workers, scientists and citizens of the country, Mandaviya said the campaign was launched under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with ‘sabka prayas’ (endeavour of all).

“Today the world’s largest vaccination campaign completes one year. This campaign started under the leadership of PM @NarendraModiji with ‘Sabke Prayas’ is the most successful vaccination campaign in the world today. I congratulate all the health workers, scientists and countrymen,” he wrote on Twitter.

Exactly a year ago, India began its vaccine campaign against pandemic with the first doses administered to its healthcare workers, fighting the battle from the front. It has since administered more than 156.76 crore doses. The drive was later expanded to cover frontline workers, followed by people above 60 years of age and those above 45 years with comorbidities.

Later, the vaccine coverage was also expanded to all above 45 years of age and recently to those above 18 years of age.

The country started vaccinating its teenagers between the age group 15-18 on January 3, 2022. The process of administering precautionary doses to the healthcare workers, frontline workers and sixty plus individuals also commenced from January 10 this year.

According to the health ministry, 1,56,76,15,454 vaccine doses have been administered to eligible beneficiaries, as revealed by provisional reports till 7am on Sunday.

In the last 24 hours, more than 66 lakh vaccine doses were administered.

Meanwhile, the vaccines have been termed as one of the biggest weapons in wake of the emerging new variants of Covid-19. The highly transmissible Omicron variant, first detected in South Africa last year and later across the world, is possibly fuelling the third wave of infections in the country.

With 2,71,202 fresh infections being registered in the past 24 hours, India reported yet another surge in its Covid-19 tally on Sunday, maintaining the upward trend since the past few weeks.

The current active caseload stood at 15,50,377, comprising 4.81 per cent of the total infections.