Will India Achieve Vaccination Target By December?
By A Special Correspondent
First publised on 2021-06-09 16:24:31
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The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to submit a roadmap of how it proposes to vaccinate a majority of the adult population by December. That means the government will have to submit the details of vaccine doses required for the purpose and how the government proposes to acquire them. But more importantly, it also means that the government will have to show that even if it manages to acquire the doses how it will set up the infrastructure needed to vaccinate so many people in such a short time.
A report in The Times of India has shown that in order to achieve 100% of the target by December, India will have to up the rate of vaccination by 5 times the current rate. The figure is different for different states, with UP needing to up it by 9 times and Bihar by 8.4 times. On an average, India has been vaccinating about 22 lakh people daily in recent days. This means that from now on it will have to vaccinate 1 crore or more persons daily. The figure will increase further if we consider the fact that vaccine supply is likely to improve only from the middle of July.
If we take that on an average each vaccine centre will vaccinate 200 persons daily, India will have to set up 50000 (it has been reported that India currently has 45000 centres for vaccinating people) or more vaccine centres when it begins to vaccinate 1 crore persons daily. Laggard states will have to set up more centres than states that are performing well. It will be huge challenge to do so but given India's experience in mass inoculation programmes, it is achievable. The scaling up will have to be started immediately. It is good to note that 31 lakh doses were administered on Monday. This was 25% more than the average that was being given in the preceding days. If the scaling up is done at this rate and if vaccine doses are available in time, the target is likely to be met by December.
pic courtesy: business-standard.com
