India administers precautionary doses to over 10 million on Friday

At the current pace, India will take over 2.5 months to administer precautionary doses

On Friday, India administered precautionary doses to over 10 million people. The country has been administering 600,000 precautionary doses daily.

Analysis of data shows that six states account for half the precautionary doses administered in the country. Gujarat, which had administered precautionary doses to a million people, accounted for 11.3 per cent of total precautionary dose administrations, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

The government has to administer the precautionary dose to nearly 57 million people. At the current pace, it will take another 73 days or over 2.5 months to cover the entire population of health and frontline workers and people aged 60 and above with comorbidities.

While India’s progress is slower than expected, it has not even been able to scratch the surface compared to other countries. The United Kingdom, which started administering a precautionary dose to the older cohort, has expanded the programme to all its vaccinated population. US and European countries have taken a similar stance.

Analysis of Our World in Database shows that Chile has administered the 65 booster doses per 100 people, whereas the UK, Singapore, Italy and Germany have achieved over 50 per cent coverage. The US has administered 25.6 booster doses per 100 people, whereas the global average is 11.95 doses per 100 people.

Even Bangladesh performed better than India. It has administered 0.76 booster doses per 100 people compared to 0.65 doses in India.

India lags the world in fully vaccinated adults as well. Brazil has fully vaccinated 70 per cent of the population, whereas India has been able to vaccinate 49 per cent of its population fully. The global average for fully vaccinated population was 52 per cent.