For the first time in over a month, India has administered close to 3 million doses everyday on consecutive days — something not seen since mid-April, suggests figures from CoWIN, the vaccine management portal. A rise in the number of daily vaccinations has been apparent since May 24 and is led by an increase in those turning up for the first dose of vaccine, who now make up over 93% of the daily doses administered.
There is however no guarantee this trend will continue as there is considerable lag between vaccine production and its actually supply.
On May 28, India administered 3 million doses — the first time it has crossed that mark since April 17. As of Saturday evening, 2.92 million doses were administered and as far as previous trends go these numbers are usually revised upwards when the day’s doses are accounted for.
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On April 1, India opened vaccinations for those above 45 and within a few days vaccines administered showed a sharp rise with a record 4.5 million doses being administered on April 5. This demand was buoyed by a steady rise in cases since late March and intensifying by April, however by April 17 the number of vaccines administered everyday had fallen to below 3 million and beginning the last week of April has generally hovered between 2-2.5 million doses. For most of May, it has averaged about 1.5 million.
Beginning May 24, there has been an increase with doses again reaching over 2 million. On May 13, an expert panel of the government recommended increasing the interval between two shots of Covishield from 4-8 weeks to 12-16 weeks. From May 17, there has been a widening gap in those who’ve got one dose and those getting their second dose. For instance, on average 1.5-2 lakh second doses have been given since May 17, whereas the first dosers have jumped from 1.5 million to 2.8 million as on Friday.
The ratio of registrations to doses administered now stands at 6.5:1, which was an ‘alarming’ 11:1 a week before, according to a statement from R.S. Sharma, Chairman, Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management on Friday. “Overall, with over 244 million registrations and over 167 million receiving at least one dose [as per data at 7 p.m., May 29], the shortfall explains the current proceedings, which will naturally catch up as time passes and there is a larger supply of vaccines.” India has so far administered over 20.7 crore vaccines.
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