Explained: How India missed its 100 per cent vaccination target

The BJPled central government on Friday missed its target of fully vaccinating its entire adult population by the end of 2021 The number of eligible beneficiaries was 94 crore of which 61 per cent have been fully vaccinated till December 25On December 25 in a national address Prime Minister Narendra Modi said ldquoOver 61 per cent of Indiarsquos population has received both doses of the vaccine and 90 per cent has got the first doserdquoOn May 28 Union Minister of Human Resource and Development Prakash Javadekar who was then the Information and Broadcasting minister had announced that by December 216 crore doses of the vaccine will be ready and India will be fully vaccinatedThe Centre had also told the Supreme Court in June that it expects to vaccinate the entire adult population by yearendIn the past few months the Health Ministry hasnrsquot spoken about the 100 per cent target in any of its press conferencesHow is Indiarsquos vaccination drive faringIn September the countryrsquos vaccination rate was about 81 lakh doses a day The highest number of vaccinations 25 crore doses was given on the Prime Ministerrsquos birthday on September 17 The number of cumulative Covid19 vaccine doses in the country crossed the 100crore mark on October 21 however there has been a decline in daily doses compared to September with 54 lakh in October and 57 lakh in NovemberAccording to the data on Centrersquos CoWIN dashboard there has been a decrease in first and second doses being administered in the month of December with 540 07780 in the first week December 4 to 10 and 34547 989 in the New Year week December 2531The vaccination drive initially faced issues of raw material shortage logistical issues and vaccine hesitancy Although the supply concerns have been resolved experts believe vaccine hesitancy could be the new challengeOn November 3 the Centre had launched the lsquoHar Ghar Dastakrsquo campaign for athome vaccinations In a month the first dose of vaccinations increased by only 59 per cent while the second dose rose by 117 per cent according to the Health MinistryHow many vaccines do we haveThe country is currently administering Covishield Covaxin and Russiarsquos Sputnik As per news reports the Serum Institute of India SII was producing 250275 million Covishield doses a month till November while 5060 million doses of Bharat Biotechrsquos Covaxin are being produced monthly Both companies have reached about 90 per cent of their present production capacity as per Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin PawarOn December 8 however SII said itrsquos cutting its production capacity by 50 per cent as it had no further orders from the Centre Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya recently said in Parliament that states had 170 million doses in stock as of December 20It should be noted that Centre recently announced jabs for children aged 1518 and booster doses for health workers and those above 60 Earlier this month SII chief Adar Poonawalla had said the company has 500 million does in stock in case the Centre decides to give booster dosesAre we still exporting vaccinesVaccine demand in the country slowed down in November and daily cases started falling which made SII resume exporting doses to Covax the global vaccinesharing programmeAbout 700 million vaccines have been given to 144 countries by Covax as of December 14 out of them 40 million were provided by SIIIndia reported 16764 new Covid19 cases in the last 24 hours Omicron cases rose to 1270Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday criticised the Centre for missing the double vaccination target saying the governments claims to achieve 100 per cent vaccination turned out to be JumlaThe Central government had promised 100 per cent vaccination by the end of 2021 today is the last day of the year the country is still far from the vaccination target One more Jumla got shattered the Congress leader tweeted