Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
The national capital crossed the 20 million vaccine doses milestone against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on Saturday with over 85% of Delhi’s population already receiving at least one Covid jab, according to government data.
Delhi has now become the 18th state or Union Territory to surpass the 20-million figure for Covid-19 jabs, an important landmark for the city in its fight to overcome the pandemic, even as daily vaccinations have slowed down over the past month.
As of 9.30pm on Saturday, according the Centre’s CoWIN dashboard, Delhi administered 20,046,547 doses.
Delhi hit the 20-million milestone two days after the country crossed the much-awaited 1 billion mark in Covid-19 vaccinations — just over nine months after the country began a massive inoculation programme to protect all its adults against Covid-19.
Of the 20 million doses so far, over 12.8 million have taken the first jab of the shot, and 7.1 million have been fully vaccinated. Delhi has an adult population of around 15 million, according to January 2021 electoral data.
Of the shots administered so far in Delhi, according to the Centre’s CoWIN dashboard, the maximum have been recorded in the north-west district with 2,396,252 shots, with the south-west district a close second at 2,314,641 jabs. The least doses were administered in the north-east district at 1,255,828.
Of the total 20 million doses, more than 11 million beneficiaries were male and over 8 million were females, according to the data.
However, the pace of vaccination in the national capital has slowed down this month, with only just over 75,500 vaccines being administered a day on average over the last seven days. Last month, Delhi had seen over 200,000 doses being administered a day on a few occasions.
To be sure, Delhi is not an outlying region to have witnessed such a drop – it is visible at the national level as well. The seven-day average of daily vaccinations in India, which touched a peak of 9.7 million for the week ending September 23, has dropped nearly 60% in the past week.
Since September-end Delhi has also seen more second jabs being administered as compared to the first dose. Of the eligible population, 47% have completed their immunisation with both doses, according to data from the government’s CoWIN portal.
In a statement, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s office said on Friday evening said, ‘As a responsible and sensitive, the Kejriwal government rapidly working on vaccinating the entire population of Delhi and will leave no one behind in this drive. The Delhi government is about to touch the two-crore [20 million] mark thanks to our highly motivated front line workers and our rigorous infrastructure, which helped accelerate our efforts even when we had low vaccine stocks.’
Last week, the Centre had urged states and union territories to focus on increasing the coverage of the second dose of the vaccine.
Dr Suneela Garg, professor in the department of community medicine at Maulana Azad Medical College, said, ‘There is a need to further increase the coverage of second dose in Delhi, especially during the festive season to prevent a surge after it. There is already an uptick in cases in Bengal after pooja. Technically, there is a need to reduce the gap between the two doses of Covishield to ideally eight weeks; now we have enough vaccine supply. , we need to remember Delhi has a huge floating population of people from the neighbouring states and the vaccine coverage in Uttar Pradesh is lower. Delhi can get cases from neighbouring states.’
