25% adults may not get fully vaccinated by the year end

With Bharat Biotech repeatedly failing to scale up the production of Covaxin to promised levels, its share in vaccination remains about 11.6%.

  • Updated On Oct 9, 2021 at 11:00 AM IST
New Delhi: If the regulations on a 12-16 week gap between the first and second shots of Covishield remain unchanged, at least around a quarter of India’s adult population will not be able to get fully vaccinated by the end of this year. As of 7pm on Friday, over 26 crore of the 94 crore adults or about 28% had not got even their first shot. Almost 90% of vaccination has been through Covishield, and there are only 12 weeks left in the year.

With Bharat Biotech repeatedly failing to scale up the production of Covaxin to promised levels, its share in vaccination remains about 11.6%. Since the bulk of the vaccination would presumably be doses of Covishield, most of the population getting its first dose after Friday would be eligible for the next dose only sometime next year.

Advt
The proportion of population which has not been vaccinated at all varies from as high as 43% in Jharkhand and 39% in Uttar Pradesh to nil in Himachal Pradesh, which could even fully vaccinate its entire adult population before year-end.

Worryingly, the most populous states such as Uttar Pradesh , Bihar, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu would end up having the largest proportion, well over a third of the adult population, who have not been fully vaccinated by year end. Jammu and Kashmir and Kerala would have barely 6% to 7% of the adult population left to be fully vaccinated if they can provide second shots to all those who have already got their first shots.

This is only based on those who haven’t got any shots at all. In addition to these, there could well be those who have got their first shots but do not get the second by the end of the year. As TOI had reported earlier, there were crores of people even within health workers, frontline workers and the elderly who had not got their second shot well after the 16-week gap was over.

  • Published On Oct 9, 2021 at 10:47 AM IST
Be the first one to comment.
Comment Now

Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals

Subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights & analysis.

Download ETHealthworld App

  • Get Realtime updates
  • Save your favourite articles
Scan to download App