Covid-19 vaccination drive underway at a PMC center. (Express photo by Ashish Kale)
"This is achievement belongs to every Indian. I express my gratitude towards vaccine manufacturers, health workers and all others involved in this vaccination program," PM Modi said.
A closer look at the vaccine data shows that India’s inoculation drive has been fairly equitable — with over 65 per cent of total vaccine doses being administered in rural areas. Overall, while 74 per cent of the estimated adult population have received the first dose, 31 per cent are fully vaccinated.
"Congratulations to the people and healthcare workers of India. It's remarkable to reach 1 billion dose mark for any nation, an achievement in just over 9 months since the vaccination program started in India," Dr VK Paul, Member-Health, NITI Aayog said.
Congratulating India for reaching yet another Covid milestone, Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director WHO South-East Asia said, "Huge congratulations to India for marking yet another milestone -- a billion Covid-19 vaccine doses administered. This extraordinary feat in a short span was not possible without strong political leadership, inter-sectoral convergence, dedicated efforts of the entire health and frontline workforce, and the people themselves."
India took 85 days to touch the 10-crore vaccination mark, 45 more days to cross the 20-crore mark and 29 more days to reach the 30-crore mark, according to the Union Health Ministry data.
The country took 24 days to reach the 40-crore mark from 30-crore doses and then 20 more days to surpass the 50-crore vaccination mark on August 6.It then took 76 days to go past the 100-crore mark.
The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 with health care workers (HCWs) getting inoculated in the first phase. The vaccination of frontline workers (FLWs) started from February 2.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital as India crossed the 1 billion Covid-19 vaccine dose milestone, in New Delhi. (PTI Photo)
As India surpassed the 100-crore Covid-19 vaccine dose landmark, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor Thursday credited the Central government for the feat saying that after severe mismanagement of the second wave and botched-up vaccination orders, the government “has partly redeemed itself”.
The remark, however, drew a sharp response from party colleague Pawan Khera, who asserted that giving credit to the government is an “insult” to millions of families that “suffered due to the mismanagement” of the pandemic.
Jameela, 30, ASHA, Rajouri, Jammu
Sanukot village of the border Rajouri district’s Kandi block has a population of nearly 1,600 people. Jameela, a 30-year-old ASHA (accredited social health activist) has fully vaccinated all of them except some 50-60 people.
The ones left out are those who, along with their cattle, had gone to pastures on the higher reaches during summer in Jammu and Kashmir or the Union Territory of Ladakh. Now, with winters setting in and these nomads likely to return home in the area during the next few days, she has started preparing to visit them at their doorstep as well.
Sanukot village in Jammu's Rajouri district is situated on rugged hilly terrain over a vast area far from motorable roads, forcing Jameela to trek for nearly 6-7 hours. Read more
Dr Shivappa S Gotyal (51), Medical Officer, Channayanakote, Kodagu, Karnataka
A drive through the dense forests of Karnataka’s Kodagu district and a long walk through the slushy terrain thereafter to reach scattered tribal settlements in Virajpet taluk has been a challenging act for Medical Officer Dr Shivappa S Gotyal and his team of vaccinators in the past few months.
“Each time we visited these areas, our team was focussed on our goal to convince maximum dwellers to take the Covid-19 vaccine amid fears of wild animals intruding these forest areas,” 51-year-old Gotyal recounts. Read more
Ishfaq Shabir, 25, Baramulla, Kashmir
Over the last two years, Ishfaq Shabir has been working as the main nurse in Boniyar block of Kashmir’s Baramulla district. Everyday, he would pick up the ice box and travel to villages right at the Line of Control. Away from the city of Srinagar and its power centres, he said, resistance to vaccines was high.
The 25-year-old health worker said when vaccination for the 18-44 age group was opened, dealing with the younger generation was a tougher task than any uphill trek in the villages.
“With the amount of misinformation on Covid-19 online, the generation that consumes this media was the toughest to convince,” he said. Camps could not be held given the difficulty of the terrain. So, the team administered door-to-door vaccination to over 60 per cent of the population of this block, Boniyar block has about 32,500 people in the 18-44 age group. Read more
Reeta Fulmadri can’t forget the day after Independence Day this year when she got stuck in neck-deep water in a nullah on the way to Chote Sunkanpalli village in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district. Fulmadri, 28, is the second-in-command at the Maoist-affected district’s Lingagiri sub-center. She was trekking to the village when the nullah suddenly filled up with water. “I was with another colleague, and both of us were sure that the water would come up only upto our waists. But while crossing the nullah, we felt the water flow and level increase. Right in the middle, I lost my footing because of the water flow, and when I regained balance, the water was up to my neck,” recounted Fulmadri, who’s been working in the area in the same post for the last five years. “We make the rounds for regular vaccines as well, but there are more regulations for Covid-19 vaccines, as they need to be temperature controlled,” she added.
Fulmadri who is responsible for vaccination in six villages that fall under the Lingagiri sub-center in Usoor tehsil had to cross more than geographical barriers of hills and nullahs to vaccinate more than 5,000 people. Read more
Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope Thursday announced a special drive to fully vaccinate students in the age group of 18 to 25 years across the state in order to help them attend physical classes at colleges.
The drive will begin October 25 and will go on till November 2 at colleges across Maharashtra. All colleges have been given the responsibility to collect data in three days on how many students have received the first dose. Read more
What is the announcement made by the FDA on Wednesday?
Now, the FDA has authorised booster doses of all the three vaccines that are in use in the US at the moment. These three vaccines include the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, Johnson and Johnson’s Janssen and the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Apart from increasing the range of the eligible population for booster shots, the FDA has also allowed mixing and matching. This means that a person who has received two doses of one brand of a Covid-19 vaccine can receive a booster dose from a different brand.
Who all are eligible for Covid-19 booster shots in the US now?
With Wednesday’s announcement, the use of a single booster dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine can be administered at least 6 months after completion of the first two primary doses to the following individuals: those who are 65 years of age and older, 18 through 64 years of age at high risk of severe Covid-19 and 18 through 64 years of age with frequent institutional or occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine booster is also meant to be given at least six months after the completion of the primary dose. Read more.
Can new variants of the coronavirus keep emerging?
Yes, as long as the virus that caused the pandemic keeps infecting people. But that doesn’t mean new variants will keep emerging as regularly, or that they’ll be more dangerous.
With more than half the world still not vaccinated, the virus will likely keep finding people to infect and replicating inside them for several months or years to come. And each time a virus makes a copy of itself, a small mutation could occur. Those changes could help the virus survive, becoming new variants.
But that doesn’t mean the virus will keep evolving in the same way since it emerged in late 2019. Read more
All international travellers arriving in India need to present a negative RT-PCR report for Covid-19, according to new guidelines issued by the Centre. The rule comes into effect from October 25 midnight, and is applicable to all those arriving via air, sea and land.
Additionally, all travellers are required to submit a self-declaration form on the online portal http://www.newdelhiairport.in prior arrival. The RT-PCR result should be supplemented by a self-declaration on the authenticity of the report with the understanding that they will be liable for criminal prosecution if found to be inauthentic. All passengers have also been advised to download Aarogya Setu app on their mobile devices.
Once they land in India, all passengers will have to undergo thermal screenings and show the self-declaration forms at the airport. Symptomatic patients and their contacts maybe isolated as per protocol. Read more
Moreover, as feared by health experts, the vaccine rollout is not equitably distributed around the world. Developed nations are vaccinating their populations far faster than less developed countries. Even countries like India, which didn’t rely on imports and have been developing their own vaccines, have hit huge supply bottlenecks. Read more.
India, according to Covidvax.live, also has the highest speed of vaccination, administering 35 lakh doses per day, which is 22 lakh more than US and 28 lakh more than Japan.
But this dramatically changes when it is viewed against the percentage of the population covered. The United Arab Emirates leads the list of countries with 87.26 per cent of their population fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins University’s vaccine tracker. While India is below its neighbours Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, with only 20.55 per cent of the population fully vaccinated.
It took India just 281 days to administer 100 crore Covid vaccine doses. The pace at which the vaccinations were administered is unparalleled as it took India 32 years and 20 years to hit the 100-crore milestone for TB and polio immunisations, respectively. But how does this feat measure against other countries, where some of them had early access to vaccines?
In terms of absolute numbers, only India and China occupy the billion-doses club. And this won’t change as no other country has a population of similar size. According to Our World in Data’s vaccine tracker, India is at number two when it comes to the number of doses given. It is followed by the United States, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, France, Russia, United Kingdom.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) made announcements through its public address systems and displayed messages on panels in trains and at stations to mark the 100-crore vaccination milestone in India.
Shajida Khatun (49), ANM health worker, Goalpara, Assam
Most of 49-year-old Shajida Khatun’s year has been spent navigating the waters of the Brahmaputra to vaccinate the residents of Assam’s remote chars and chaporis, or the shifting sandbars that dot the river and its tributaries. An ANM (Auxiliary Nurse Midwife) health worker in Goalpara district, Khatun has walked for hours, sometimes in knee-deep water, to vaccinate people in areas, where she says “no cars can even reach”.
Marked by poor health indices, illiteracy and poverty, the chars are not easy to access, especially during the monsoon. Read the full report here.
CEO of Serum Institute of India Adar Poonawalla congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers and health workers across the country for achieving the feat, which the PM tagged as "historic"
Chekala Lalitha, 35, ASHA worker Ranga Reddy district
Lalitha, one among the numerous Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers who form the backbone of the vaccination drive in Telangana, goes door to door at Shadnagar in Ranga Reddy district, on the outskirts of Hyderabad. She says vaccination is a unique challenge because Shadnagar is a well-developed urban area but only a few residents step out to get vaccinated.
Dressed in a white cotton saree, Lalitha along with a nurse mostly has to coax residents to take the Covid-19 vaccine. “The first response when I knock on a door is that they do not want to take the vaccine. They say they have heard that a person taking the vaccine falls sick or develops high fever for several days or the injection causes body aches. With some of the residents, no amount of convincing works,” she says. Read the full report here.
Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India has congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi under whose exemplary leadership India has crossed the mark of one billion doses of Covid 19 vaccine.In his tweet he has also congratulated the GoI ministries,agencies and healthcare workers for their relentless efforts during this pandemic.
"Reaching the 1 billion mark of COVID-19 vaccinations in just nine-months is a remarkable achievement for India. Bharat Biotech is proud to have contributed to this historic landmark. This is a unified effort of the Government, vaccine manufacturers, healthcare workers and all the vaccinated citizens of India, making it a true success story of Atmanirbharta." -- Dr. Krishna Ella, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharat Biotech has said in a statement issued today.
Dr Seema Garg (52), District Immunization officer, Hoshiarpur district (Punjab)
When Dr Seema Garg joined as the district immunization officer of Hoshiarpur district on January 1 this year, the first major task she had at hand was the Covid vaccination drive that commenced in the country on January 16, with healthcare workers as priority in phase-I.
There was massive vaccine hesitancy in entire Punjab with not many healthcare workers coming forward to get the jab and the problem was aggravated with the stand taken by Accredited Social Health activist (ASHA) workers; union, to not get jabbed till their demands weren’t met as they continued their protest against state government and refused to get vaccinated.
The district is also a part of Kandi belt comprising villages in sub-mountainous terrain. Read the full report here.
"Congratulations, PM Narendra Modi, the scientists, healthworkers & people of India, on your efforts to protect the vulnerable populations from COVID19 and achieve vaccine equity targets," tweeted Tedros A. Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization
K Srinath Reddy writes: That we are nearing the landmark of 100-crore Covid inoculations is certainly a morale booster, especially when we look back at the first half of 2021, when there was uncertainty about the planning and pace of the programme amidst a devastating second wave. While there is a need to complete second doses for many, which the government is addressing as a priority, we can draw satisfaction from the fact that over 70 per cent of the population has received at least one shot. Combined with the natural immunity that may still be lingering among those infected in the Delta-charged second wave a few months ago, a large number of Indians may presently be protected against serious illness and death from the virus.
In terms of single-dose vaccinations, we are ahead of the United States (66 per cent). This is because anti-vaccine resistance is minimal in India, where apathy and the feeling that the “worst is over” are greater barriers than political or religious opposition. As immunity from the first dose or natural infection fades, we need to ensure a second dose is administered to all eligible persons by March 2022. We should aim for 100 crore more vaccine shots, building on the momentum. Read the full opinion here.
From the launch of an audiovisual film from the Red Fort to monuments being illuminated across the country, it is going to be all celebrations today as India crossed the 1 billion vaccination milestone.
Calling it a “the triumph of Indian science, enterprise and collective spirit of 130 crore Indians”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “India scripts history. We are witnessing the triumph of Indian science, enterprise, and collective spirit of 130 crore Indians. Congrats India on crossing 100 crore vaccinations. Gratitude to our doctors, nurses, and all those who worked to achieve this feat.” Read the full report here.
More than nine months since India launched one of the largest Covid-19vaccination drives in the world, the country on Thursday crossed the milestone of administering over 100 crore doses.
Significantly, almost 15 out of every 100 doses that have been administered globally have been from India.
The number is also significant because more than 65 per cent of the total vaccines administered in India have been in the rural parts of the country — an indicator of greater equity in access to the shots. In stark contrast, as public health experts have been raising concerns over vaccine inequity, according to estimates — just over 3 per cent of the people in the lower-income countries have received one dose. Read the full report here.
"Congratulations to the people and healthcare workers of India. It's remarkable to reach 1 billion dose mark for any nation, an achievement in just over 9 months since the vaccination program started in India," Dr VK Paul, Member-Health, NITI Aayog said.