India Records COVID-19 Vaccination Record, Expert: Needs 10 Million Doses Per Day

COVID-19 vaccination center in India. (Wikimedia Commons/Sumita Roy Dutta)

JAKARTA - India recorded a record of administering the COVID-19 vaccine in a day, where as many as 7.5 million doses of the vaccine were injected into all eligible adults for free.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the government would buy 75 percent of the vaccine from all manufacturers, to be distributed free of charge to all states, after private hospitals had previously purchased vaccines for people aged 18-45.

Previously, India recorded a record 4.5 million doses of vaccine on April 5, but then dropped to an average of below 3 million doses per day. Meanwhile, experts say India needs to deliver 10 million doses of the vaccine a day to reach its target of 950 million people being vaccinated by December. Currently, the number of Indians who have received the complete vaccine is less than 5 percent of the total population.

"If supply remains consistent, we will be on track to inject most of our population by the end of the year," DN Patil, senior health official in Maharashtra state, which has a population of more than 125 million, told Reuters.

Previously, the Government of India was optimistic that it could have 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine per day in July and August. However, government adviser Vinod Kumar Paul said yesterday that administering 10 million doses of the vaccine per day was not a set goal.

"When the increase occurs, the speed of implementation must also be increased and that will lead to a certain amount," Paul explained in an interview with the CNBC-TV18 channel.

"There is a demonstration by the system of how much can be done on any given day, at least this is something that should become clear at the end of the day."

To note, India reported 53,256 new cases of infection, with the total number of cases reaching 29.9 million, India ranks second highest globally after the United States.

"This marks the beginning of the end of the COVID-19-related hardships in the country," Giridhara Babu, a member of the Indian Council of Medical Research, the country's main health research body, told Reuters.