India ramps up nationwide Covid 19 vaccination drive

The Union government said on Wednesday that the nationwide vaccination drive has been ramped up with the availability of more vaccines, advance the visibility of vaccine availability to States to enable better planning, and streamlining of the vaccine supply chain.

As of August 25, the government has provided more than 58.07 crore vaccine doses to States and Union Territories (UTs) through the free-of-cost channel and direct State procurement. Further, 5.2 million doses are in the pipeline. In addition, States and UTs already have more than 3.62 crore unutilised Covid vaccine doses on hand.

As part of the nationwide vaccination drive, the government has been supporting the States and UTs by providing them Covid vaccines free of cost.

Barclays, in its recent report, said that the revised supply estimates suggest that an average of 5.6 million doses per day will be available from September.

The present Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity is 130-140 million doses per month, and this is expected to reach 360-370 million doses by the end of December 2021, a CARE Ratings report estimates.

The government last week approved emergency use of Zydus Cadila's ZyCoV-D vaccine for those aged 12 years and above. Zydus said it expects to have supplies of 1 crore doses of the vaccine by October. The vaccine needs to be taken in three doses. In addition to ZyCoV-D, large supplies of Sputnik V are expected to enter the market by the end of September and October. The government has also approved Covid-19 vaccines developed by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson for emergency use.