India has fully vaccinated about 5 per cent of its eligible population against Covid-19 and would need to more than double its pace of inoculations to cover all people by the year-end, according to Union health ministry’s data.
The vaccination campaign that started five months ago had until Friday administered one dose to more than 220 million people. Over 50 million (5.2 per cent) of the eligible estimated 950 million people have received both doses required for protection.
The pace of inoculations has increased in June to nearly 3.2 million doses daily over May’s average of about 2 million daily doses. But health experts say the country would need to administer over 8.3 million doses daily for the rest of the year to fully vaccinate the eligible population.
The health ministry had said on May 30 that nearly 120 million vaccine doses would be available during June for use by states and private hospitals but the campaign had administered about 45 million doses during the first two weeks of the month.
“The pace has picked up since May, but if we don’t see a further rise in daily doses administered during the rest of the month, we might see a shortfall from the target of 120 million doses,” said R. Ramakumar, professor of developmental studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
The vaccination campaign had during May administered about 61 million doses although the number of doses actually available to states was over 79 million. The ministry had said on June 2 that the “balance and unutilised doses” were available with states and Union Territories.
Health officials have said they expect the campaign to significantly accelerate during the second half of the year after additional doses become available between August and December through a combination of new vaccines and enhanced production.
But amid the current slower-than-ideal pace of inoculations, officials and doctors say preliminary studies of vaccine effectiveness in the country have demonstrated the protective effects of even a single dose against hospitalisation and severe disease.
A study at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, has observed a protective effect of 92 per cent against the need for oxygen after two doses and nearly 94 per cent against the need for intensive care unit support after a single dose of Covishield.
The protective effect implies that if 100 unvaccinated patients required oxygen or intensive care unit support, only eight vaccinated patients would need oxygen or six would require ICU. “These are very significant protective effects,” said K. Prasad Mathews, professor at the CMC and study team member.
A study in the UK had shown the AstraZeneca vaccine (Covishield in India) is 71 per cent effective against hospitalisation from the so-called delta variant — first detected in India — after a first dose and 92 per cent effective after a second dose.