India's Covid-19 vaccination drive must increase by sixfold, say health experts: Report

Health experts said the vaccination drive needs to pick up pace if all beneficiaries under the third priority group are to be inoculated anytime soon

Over 33,000 beneficiaries were given the coronavirus vaccine on Saturday, making it the highest number of people vaccinated in a single day since the beginning of the inoculation drive on January 16. Experts, however, feel that the numbers are too low.

Health experts told Hindustan Times that the vaccination drive needs to pick up pace if all beneficiaries under the third priority group are to be inoculated anytime soon.

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“We need to speed up the vaccination drive by at least sixfold. For that, there is a need to increase the number of vaccination centres, the timing of centres, which the Central government has already done, remove the cap on the number of shots each centre can give daily, set up bigger centres at facilities like the 10,000-bed Covid Care Centre that had been set up in Delhi and carry out mass vaccination campaigns, and gradually relax the age criteria for vaccination,” HT quoted Dr SK Sarin, Director, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences as saying.

Under the nationwide mega vaccination drive launched mid-January, a total of 4,319 health workers against a target of 8,117 (53 per cent), were administered the shots at 81 centres across Delhi on day one.

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As per official estimates, there are around 43 lakh people in the specified priority category of 60 years or above and those within 45-59 years with comorbidities in Delhi.

Two doses have to be administered four to six weeks apart for both Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and Serum Institute of India’s Covishield — which are currently being administered in India.

(With agency inputs)