COVID-19 Death Rate Reaches 400,000, Vaccination Speed In India Declines

Illustrated COVID-19 in India. (Wikimedia Commons / Ganesh Dhamodkar)

JAKARTA - India set a dark record, when the death toll from COVID-19 crossed 400,000 people, after recording an increase of 853 deaths, according to data from the Ministry of Health.

Worldometers data Friday, July 2, noted that India now has a total of 30,458,251 infection cases with 400,312 deaths due to COVID-19, with 29,548,302 patients recovering.

"The low death count is something that has happened across the state, largely due to lags in the system, so it means we'll never know how many people died in this second wave", said Rijo M John, a professor at the School. Rajagiri College of Social Sciences in the southern city of Kochi, as quoted by Reuters Friday, July 2.

Although there is still an increase in cases, the number has continued to ease to a two-month low, since peaking with around 400 thousand new cases per day in May.

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is shifting its focus to mass COVID-19 vaccination, with a nationwide campaign that began last week to vaccinate all adults in India for free, to achieve its target of 950 million people being vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of the year.

However, official data shows the pace of COVID-19 vaccination in India has not been stable. After last week being able to record 6.6 million doses per day, this week India only provided an average of 3.5 million doses per day.

The peak of vaccination in India is called by experts on June 21, where about 9 million doses of vaccine are given in a day.

Official data from the government's Co-Win portal shows that only six percent of eligible adults have received the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine. India is known to use the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine which is made locally by the Serum Institute of India (SII), as well as the locally made Covaxin vaccine from Bharat Biotech.

Last month, SII said it planned to increase monthly production to nearly 100 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from July. Bharat Biotech now estimates it will produce 23 million doses per month.