COVID-19 update | Over 177.67 crore vaccine doses administered in India till now

Over 2 crore precaution doses have been given to healthcare and frontline workers and comorbid people aged 60 and above.

PTI

February 28, 2022 / 09:56 PM IST

(Representational image)

The cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in India has crossed 177.67 crore on Monday, the Union Health Ministry said. More than 15 lakh vaccine doses have been administered till on Monday 7 pm.

Over 2 crore precaution doses have been given to healthcare and frontline workers and comorbid people aged 60 and above. The daily vaccination tally is expected to increase with the compilation of the final reports for the day by late night.

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The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 with healthcare workers getting inoculated in the first phase. Inoculation of frontline workers started from February 2. The next phase of COVID-19 vaccination commenced from March 1 for people over 60 years of age and those aged 45 and above with specified co-morbid conditions.

The country launched vaccination for all people aged more than 45 years from April 1. The government then decided to expand its vaccination drive by allowing everyone above 18 to be vaccinated from May 1. The next phase of COVID-19 vaccination commenced from January 3 for adolescents in the age group of 15-18 years.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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