In charts | India’s record single-day COVID-19 vaccination drive on September 17

More than 21 million COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered in India on September, the highest ever in 24 hours

Moneycontrol News

September 18, 2021 / 17:20 IST

Representative image: Reuters

India administered 21,598,046 COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the last 24 hours, a September 18 update by the health ministry has said. The record number of jabs were given in a day pushed India's vaccines dose count to above 794 million.

Daily doses stayed above 5 million for the 12th consecutive day, taking the seven-day daily average of vaccinations to above 8 million after two weeks.

While it took India about 50 days to reach 20 million vaccine doses in March, the same number of jabs were given on September 17, indicating how vaccination has picked in the last few weeks.

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Clocking the same number may be difficult as a special effort was made on September 17, which was the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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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