New Delhi: Nearly 80 per cent of India's eligible adult population has been administered the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine while 38 per cent has been fully vaccinated, the Union Health Ministry said on Friday.
The cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country crossed 111 crore on Friday. Over 52 lakh vaccine doses were administered on Friday till 7 pm. The tally is expected to increase with the compilation of the final reports for the day by late in the night, it said.
During an interactive webinar on the ongoing 'Har Ghar Dastak' campaign, Additional Secretary in the Union Health Ministry Manohar Agnani said that under the campaign, by November 30, the government wants the first dose coverage of COVID-19 vaccination in the country to reach at least 90 per cent.
"Also maximum of the people who are overdue for their second dose should also take the second dose by then," Agnani said. The government recently launched the month-long 'Har Ghar Dastak' campaign for house-to-house COVID-19 vaccination of those who are yet to take a dose and those whose second dose is overdue.
"Going by India's current vaccination pace we can claim with confidence that the world's largest adult vaccination programme is well on track since its launch on January 16.
"To date, nearly 80 per cent of the eligible population in India has been vaccinated against COVID-19 with the first dose, while 38 per cent has been fully vaccinated," he stated.
In several states, 100 per cent of the adult population has received the first dose of the vaccine. He expressed confidence that with India's current vaccine delivery capacity, the entire adult population will soon be covered.
The Union Health Ministry has also written to several states and union territories asking them to prioritise administering the second dose to beneficiaries who have not got themselves jabbed even after the expiry of the prescribed interval between the two doses, official sources said.
Meanwhile, India logged 12,516 new Coronavirus infections, taking the country's total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,44,14,186, out of which 3,38,14,080 people have recuperated, while the active cases declined to 1,37,416, the lowest in 267 days, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.
The death toll climbed to 4,62,690 with 501 fresh fatalities, including 419 from Kerala, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.34 per cent, according to the data updated at 8 am.
Of the 419 deaths in Kerala, 47 were reported in the last few days and 372 were designated as Covid deaths after receiving appeals based on the new guidelines of the Centre and Supreme Court directions, a Kerala government release said on Thursday. Kerala has been reassessing the covid deaths toll from around two weeks.
The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been below 20,000 for 35 straight days and less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported for 138 consecutive days now.
The active cases comprise 0.40 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.26 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the ministry said.
A decrease of 1,140 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.
The daily positivity rate was recorded at 1.07 per cent. It has been less than two per cent for last 39 days. The weekly positivity rate was also recorded at 1.10 per cent. It has been below two per cent for the last 49 days, according to the ministry.
According to an interim analysis of its phase-3 trial published in The Lancet on Friday, two doses of Covaxin offer 77.8 per cent protection against symptomatic disease and present no serious safety concerns.
Covaxin, an inactivated whole virus vaccine developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, recently received emergency use approval from the World Health Organization (WHO) for people aged 18 and above.
The phase-3 trial findings indicate that Covaxin induces a robust antibody response with no severe vaccine-related adverse events or deaths reported among the trial participants, the authors of the study said.
The majority of the adverse events, including headache, fatigue, fever, and pain at the injection site, were mild and occurred within seven days of vaccination, they explained.
The vaccine is administered in a two-dose regimen, 28 days apart, and can be stored and transported between 2-8 degrees Celsius.
The trial took place from November 16 to May 17 this year, with participants aged 18 and older randomly assigned to receive two doses of the vaccine or a placebo.