How many Covid vaccine doses Centre has ordered so far

NEW DELHI: The Union health ministry on Tuesday informed

Parliament

that the Centre has procured over 100.6 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin vaccines till July 16.

In response to a question in Rajya Sabha, minister of state for health Bharati Pawar gave a breakup of communications sent to HLL, the procurement agency, for buying Covid vaccines since January this year.



According to estimates, the Centre roughly needs around 188 crore vaccine doses to inoculate its adult population of approximately 94 crore.

If we account for vaccine wastage, this number would increase to over 200 crore doses, more or less.

This means that the Centre has procured nearly half the doses it would need to fully vaccinate the entire adult population of India.

To another question about population coverage, Pawar replied that Centre expects all eligible beneficiaries aged 18 years and above to be fully vaccinated by December 2021.

This is in line with the Centre's target of 100% adult coverage before December 31 this year.

However, the data shows that doses are no longer an issue. It's the rate at which they are being administered.

The current pace of vaccination in India is not nearly fast enough to reach the target of 100% adult coverage in 2021.



According to an average of the last two weeks, India has been administering roughly 41.7 lakh shots every day. This should be over 90 lakh per day if we are to cover all the adults in 2021.

Last-mile issues, shortage of supply in some areas and vaccine hesitancy could be some of the reasons behind this.

However, the overall vaccine uptake has increased considerably if compared to the previous months since the new central vaccination policy came into force on June 21.

In this phase, the Centre is procuring and supplying (free of cost) 75 per cent of the vaccines being produced by the vaccine manufacturers in the country to states and UTs.

The vaccination drive has been ramped up recently through availability of more vaccines, advance visibility of vaccine availability to states and UTs for enabling better planning by them, and streamlining the vaccine supply chain.

Meanwhile, to another question about procurement from foreign manufacturers, Pawar replied that a team of officials deals with various issues related to the procurement of doses from international manufacturers and is in continuous dialogue with them.

The questions were put forth by Congress's Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal.


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