India's entire population can be vaccinated in 21 months if vaccine capacity ramped up, says SBI report

People sit under observation after receiving a dose of COVISHIELD, the coronavirus disease vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India, at an auditorium, which has been converted into a temporary vaccination centre in Ahmedabad. Credit: Reuters File Photo

India can vaccinate its entire population in 21 months if the daily vaccine inoculation is increased to 40-45 lakhs, a research report by the State Bank of India said.

"If we assume a greater number of people are willing to take vaccines and the daily vaccine inoculation increases to 40-45 lakhs from the current maximum level of 34 lakhs, then the entire population will be vaccinated in 1 year 9 months and with this capacity, we can vaccinate our population above 45 years in 4 months," the report said.

So far, India has administered 5.08 crore shots within a span of 67 days, or 7.9 lakh shots per day, said the report

There are 40,484 vaccine centres (35,042 government and 5,442 private) in India. Overall, there are 25,743 PHCs, 5,624 CHCs, 25,778 government hospitals, 529 medical colleges and around 43,000 private hospitals, totalling 1,00,674 potential centres, i.e. three times the existing centres used for vaccination.

“Going by the health infrastructure, we have the capacity to increase the daily doses to around 1 crore per day from the current 34 lakhs per day,” the report said.

Read: Surge in daily Covid-19 cases in six states

However, the production capacity of Covishield and Covaxin is around 52 lakh per day, and there is the export of vaccines as well.

Certain states like Rajasthan, Gujarat, Kerala, Uttarakhand and Haryana have vaccinated more than 20% of their elderly population (above 60 years). However, other states with a higher elderly population (>60 years) including Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal are lagging and thus, must increase their pace of inoculation.

Also read: India records highest single-day spike in 2021 with 53,476 fresh Covid-19 cases

A number of major states are already in the second wave of Covid-19 even though the vaccination drive is picking up pace. In many states, including Mizoram, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tripura, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, the injection to infection ratio much higher than the overall average. Meanwhile, Delhi, Maharashtra, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh have inoculated a lower number of people compared to the spread of the infection.

The entire duration of the second wave may last approximately up to 100 days counted from February 15, the SBI research shows.