India administered its 100th million doses of the Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine, a feat that was achieved in 85 days, the fastest in the world. The US did this in 89 days and China in 102 days. The journey, however, has seen its fair share of ups and downs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the nationwide Covid-19 immunization drive on January 16. From 200,000 vaccine doses that were administered on day 1, the country has seen as high as 4.3 million doses also administered in a single day last week. The aim is to target at least 5 million per day.
Since the day of the launch, experts in the government have been working hard on scaling up vaccinations to ensure the maximum number of vulnerable beneficiaries are covered as fast as possible.
“The government managed to scale up significantly in a short span of time, and there will be a further increase in weeks to come as we are looking at vaccinating at least 5 million beneficiaries per day. India has the requisite capacity, as under the Polio immunisation programme, the government has managed to vaccinate 170 million children in a week,” said Dr NK Arora, national task force member on Covid-19 vaccine related matters.