Share of rural vaccinations on the rise even as absolute numbers fall

Overall vaccinations have fallen even as daily case numbers have been on the rise

More of India’s incremental daily vaccinations are coming from rural areas, even as the absolute number of such doses fell over the last ten days. The number of rural vaccinations dropped from 6.06 million ten days ago to 5.28 million as of 20th January, on a seven-day rolling average basis. Their share in daily vaccinations however, is up from 70.5 per cent to 76.9 per cent in the same period.  

This is because urban vaccinations, while accounting for a smaller share of overall numbers, have fallen far more sharply. They fell 37.5 per cent to 1.58 million as of 20th January compared to 2.53 million only ten days ago. Rural vaccination numbers fell only 12.9 per cent in the same period (see chart 1).

The net effect of this has been that the overall daily vaccination number is down 20.1 per cent over the last ten days to 6.9 million on 20th January. All daily figures are on a seven-day rolling basis to eliminate the effects of daily fluctuations. The seven-day rolling average number of daily vaccinations was 8.6 million on 11th January.  

The seven-day rolling average number of cases have risen from around 122,490 to 321,157 in the same period, show numbers from tracker Our World in Data (see chart 2).

India has 48.22 per cent of its population completely vaccinated, and an additional 17.96 per cent are partially vaccinated according to the database. A higher proportion of the adult population has been vaccinated.

A 19th January India Equity Strategy report from financial services major Morgan Stanley noted that a majority of the adult population has been vaccinated, which is a positive for the economy.

“....with about 70 per cent of the adult population fully vaccinated and the onset of the vaccination drive for the 15-18 years age group, bodes well for further lifting consumer sentiment and improving demand conditions,” said the report authored by equity strategist Ridham Desai, economist Upasana Chachra and equity analysts Sheela Rathi, Sumeet Kariwala and Subramanian Iyer.

India’s overall vaccination rates are lower than many other countries. Brazil has 69.18 per cent of its total (not adult) population vaccinated against Covid-19, and an additional 9.21 per cent are partially vaccinated. Around 84.52 per cent of China’s total population is fully vaccinated with an additional 2.98 per cent being partially vaccinated. Japan also has higher vaccination rates. It has fully vaccinated 79.04 per cent of its population and an additional 1.31 per cent have partial vaccination. Japan has an older population than India.

India has begun giving a precautionary dose to people over the age of 60 from 10th January. There have been 6.57 million doses given since then. The number of such doses has also declined since. It was 1 million on 10th January. It has since halved to around 0.5 million over the last couple of days. The majority of vaccinations are still second doses across rural and urban areas combined. They accounted for an average share of 54.6 per cent of doses given out in the last three days for which data is available.