India to miss target of 50 crore vaccine doses by July end? Govt dismisses report
Responding to reports that nation will miss its target of administering 50 crore doses of vaccine by July end, the government said that it would make 51.60 crore vaccine shots by end of this month.
New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday trashed reports of India’s vaccination drive missing the July end target of inoculating 50 crore jabs to people. The Centre dubbed the reports as ill-informed and misleading and said that over 51.60 crore vaccine doses will be supplied from January 1 to July 31.
“These reports are ill-informed and have clearly misrepresented the facts,” the statement said.
On 193rd day of vaccination, more than 66.03 lakh vaccine doses were administered (July 26) taking the cumulative figure of Covid-19 vaccine doses to 44.19 crore. As per vaccination estimates, India will be able to administer 12.5 crore doses in the month of July.
Responding to reports that nation will miss its target of administering 50 crore doses of vaccine by July end, the government said that it would make 51.60 crore vaccine shots by end of this month.
“The facts are that a total of more than 516 million vaccine doses will indeed be supplied from January 2021 to 31st July, 2021,” the health ministry said in a statement.
It said that vaccine doses are supplied to the states in accordance with the allocation plan and they are well informed in advance.
“Therefore, availability of 516 million doses till end of a particular month does not mean that every dose supplied till that month is going to be consumed/administered. There would be supplies in pipeline, which should be available for next few days till the next supplies of vaccine doses materialise in a particular state/district/sub-district to keep vaccination going on,” the statement said.
The Health Ministry further informed that a total of 45.7 crore have already been supplied to the state and Union Territories from January till date and an additional 6.03 crore doses will be supplied by July 31.
“This will take the amount to a total of 51.73 crore doses supplied from January 1 to July 31,” it said.
In June, 11.97 crore people were administered with Covid-19 vaccine doses while in July, the number has already reached 10.62 crore (on July 26) and with current pace, it is likely to touch 12.5 crore.