A day after India reached a landmark of 100 crore COVID-19 vaccination jabs, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the achievement was because of the efforts of each and every citizen.
"Many are comparing the vaccination programme to that of other countries. There has been a lot of praise. However, it is forgotten how we started," Modi said in an address to the nation on the morning of October 22.
"Questions were raised whether India will be effectively able to combat the pandemic. Whether we will be able to procure the vaccines and innoculate our population. This achievement has answered all those questions once and for all," the prime minister said.
No country other than China has achieved this landmark. What makes it even more remarkable is the slow, rather fraught, start that India’s vaccination programme made after its start on January 16.
In an interview to Moneycontrol, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, one of Modi's closest advisors, said that India warded off a potential third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the pace of its vaccination programme.
The vaccination drive started with inoculating healthcare workers in the first phase followed by non-medical frontline personnel like police, paramilitary, armed forces, sanitation and municipal workers, senior citizens in the subsequent phases.
The country launched vaccination for all people aged above 45 years from April 1. The government then decided to expand the ambit by allowing everyone above 18 to be vaccinated from May 1.
After some states protested that the Centre should underwrite the cost of vaccination entirely, Prime Minister Modi said late in June that it would do so, paying for 75 percent of vaccine procurement cost and distributing it to states, with the rest for private sector channels.
This took the vaccination budget for the year to Rs 50,000 crore from Rs 35,000 crore.
The government has used the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, Covishield, manufactured by Serum Institute of India, Pune, and Covaxin, developed jointly by Bharat Biotech and the Indian Council of Medical Research, as the drive’s two mainstays. It also approved a third vaccine for emergency-use later - Sputnik V.
India’s one-billion-dose feat comes on the back of huge supply bottlenecks, vaccine hesitancy in the initial period and a crippling second wave of the pandemic.
On October 16, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said that India would achieve the landmark milestone of 100 crore vaccine doses in the coming week.
The health minister also said that announcements would be made on airplanes, railway stations, metros when India achieves its target of 100 crore doses.
India administered a record 25 million-plus vaccine doses in 24 hours, the highest in a single day on September 18, as per the official update. Earlier, on June 28, India overtook the US in total COVID vaccine doses administered despite starting a month late.
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