NEW DELHI: India has inoculated the highest number of beneficiaries with their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine in the world, the Union health ministry said, adding that with about 60.7% of the adult population in the country have received at least the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
The ministry also said that India has the highest number of beneficiaries (over 181 million) who have been fully vaccinated with both doses in the country. “The number of people who have received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine in India and the number of people who have completed the vaccination schedule is the highest in the world,” the ministry claimed in the e-book on Covid-19 vaccination uploaded on its portal on Tuesday. In the e-book the ministry also claimed that a significant percentage of the vaccines have been administered in rural areas, with 62.54% doses having been administered in inoculation centres located in rural areas, and 36.30% in urban areas.
A total of 73.44 lakh doses or 1.16% of the doses have been administered at Covid vaccination centres not tagged as rural or urban. This announcement comes weeks after President Ram Nath Kovind urged medical professionals to create awareness about vaccination in rural areas and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman touted vaccines as the only “medicine” that will allow businessmen and farmers to continue their work. “Vaccination is the only medicine for [the growth of the] economy. For people to buy and sell or farmers to carry out farming in their land,” Sitharaman said at an event in Tamil Nadu.
The ministry also provided a gender-wise breakdown of the vaccination coverage, stating that 52.5% of the total doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered to men, 47.5% to women and approximately 0.02% to ‘other’ gender, till September.
India on Tuesday administered 61.15 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine, taking the cumulative count across the country to the 75.89 crore mark, according to the latest bulletin by the ministry of health and family welfare on Wednesday.
