In charts | India's covid-19 vaccination picks up pace to record high

Amid the receding second wave, a record 8.6 million vaccine doses administered in a single day on June 21, with over 288 million doses inoculated till date. Check out state wise details here:

Chaitanya Mallapur

June 22, 2021 / 15:53 IST

A woman receives a dose of Covishield COVID-19 vaccine during an inoculation drive at Tosa Maidan in Jammu and Kashmir's Budgam district on June 21, 2021 (Representative image: Reuters/Danish Ismail)

As many as 8,616,373 vaccine doses were administered on Monday, a record number of jabs inoculated in a single day by any country in the world. With this, India has administered more than 288 million vaccine doses till date, according to the June 22 update by the health ministry.

India reported 42,640 new COVID-19 cases (lowest in 91 days) and 1,167 new deaths (lowest in 68 days), as per the health ministry’s June 22 update. Recoveries (81,839) outnumbered the daily new cases for the 40th consecutive day.

After reaching highs of 4 million doses per day in the first half of April, the pace of vaccination in India slowed down given the surge in cases and shortfall in supply.

The pace of vaccination has picked up since the last week of May along with decline in cases. The seven day moving average was recorded at 4 million doses based on June 22 update compared to an average 2.1 million doses on May 29.

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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