India's Covid vaccination is not over yet, Government still has stock of 3 Crore vaccines
Oct 17, 2022
By Shalini Bhardwaj
New Delhi [India], October 17 : With already more than 200 Cr vaccine (first, second and precautionary) doses administered across the country so far. The nationwide vaccination drive has still a long way to go. "India's covid vaccination program isn't over yet", said officials on Sunday.
"The government still has a stock of 3 Cr vaccine doses to be administered", ANI learned through its official sources.
"The government's COVID vaccination program is in its final stages, but it's still not over, approx 3 Cr Covid19 doses are still available with the government at the different centers and the stock is sufficient for a few months", officials said. Adding that the further decision will also depend on the Covid19 cases.
While emphasizing the country's further vaccination drive, Sources told ANI that the procurement of vaccination isn't required as of now, but that doesn't mean that the government's COVID vaccination program is over.
Notably, the Central Government is committed to accelerating the pace and expanding the scope of COVID-19 vaccination throughout the country. The nationwide COVID-19 vaccination started on January 16, 2021.
The new phase of universalization of COVID-19 vaccination commenced on June 21, 2021. The vaccination drive was ramped up through the availability of more vaccines, and advanced visibility of vaccine availability to States and UTs for enabling better planning by them and streamlining the vaccine supply chain.
As part of the ongoing nationwide vaccination drive, the Government of India has been supporting the States and UTs by providing them with COVID-19 vaccines free of cost.
Meanwhile, a total of 219.32 crores of COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered so far, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
COVID-19 vaccination for the age group 12-14 years was also started on March 16, 2022. More than 7 crore (7,32,69,084) adolescents have been administered the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. With 5,02,619 doses administered in the last 24 hours among all age groups.
Omicron's new sub-variant BA.5.1.7 is said to be highly infectious and have greater transmissibility after emerging from a region of Mongolia in China.
According to recent reports, the first case of BF.7 has been found in India as detected by the Gujarat Biotechnology Research centre.
On Sunday, India reported 2,401 fresh COVID-19 cases with which, the number of active cases increased to 26,625. The active cases comprise 0.06 percent of the total infections, according to Union health ministry data.
