Ahead of 1 Billion Vaccine Injections in India, Minister of Health Has Prepared Songs and Films in New Delhi

JAKARTA - Soon, India will make history. Successfully vaccinated as many as 1 billion doses to its citizens.

India will fulfill the number of one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine which it is believed to have occurred this Thursday, October 21. A milestone even as the recent drop in vaccination worries governments and health care providers.

India's Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will launch a song and audio-visual film at the Mughal-era Red Fort in New Delhi at noon to "celebrate a historic milestone", the ministry said, quoted from Antara cited from Reuters report.

The country of Bollywood has injected 998.5 million doses, nearly 90 of which are AstraZeneca vaccines produced locally by the Serum Institute of India.

"I urge all unvaccinated Indians to get vaccinated immediately and contribute to our historic golden vaccination journey," Mandaviya said on Twitter.

The government targets all 944 million adults in India to receive the vaccine this year. So far 75 percent of them have received the first dose and 31 percent have received the second dose.

So far India has reported 34.1 million cases and 452,000 more deaths of COVID-19, mostly during the second wave of Delta variant infections that surged across the region from April to May.

"Sufficiently" people in India have not received a second dose despite adequate vaccine supplies, the health ministry said on Tuesday as new infections hit their lowest level since early May.

Even though the number of infections is currently low, ministry officials have asked citizens to get vaccines immediately, especially during the festival season.

During festivals, families usually gather and shop together, potentially creating a new wave of infections.