Centre does a fact-check, says nation to meet July target of 50 cr vaccines

The Centre on Tuesday came down heavily on media reports saying the country is likely to miss its July-end target of administering 50 crore COVID vaccines. “These reports are ill-informed and have clearly misrepresented the facts,” said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) in a press release.

#COVID19Vaccination Myths vs. Facts

❌Media reports alleging that India will miss the end-July 2021 target of administering half a billion doses are ill-informed and have clearly misrepresented the facts.#LargestVaccineDrive

Read: https://t.co/dZffD77vjB pic.twitter.com/nx9n0AHsZE

— PIB India (@PIB_India) July 27, 2021

“The figure of 516 million (51.6 crore) vaccine doses might have been picked up from various sources which informed about the likely availability of the vaccine doses from January 2021 to the end of July 2021,” it said. “The facts are that a total of more than 516 million vaccine doses will indeed be supplied from January 2021 to July 31, 2021.”

Advance allocation plan

The MoHFW said vaccine doses are supplied to states and Union Territories (UTs) in line with the advance allocation plan, and that the respective governments are informed about it in advance.

Also read: COVID vaccine for children from August, says Health Minister Mandaviya

“The vaccines are supplied to the states in various schedules throughout the month. Therefore, the availability of 516 million doses till the end of a particular month does not mean that every dose supplied till that month is going to be consumed/administered,” said the release.

“There would be supplies in pipeline, which should be available for next few days till the next supplies of vaccine doses materialise in a particular state/district/sub-district to keep vaccination going on,” it added.

The release noted that a cumulative total of 457 million doses have been supplied to the states/UTs from January 2021 till date and an additional 60.3 million doses are expected to be supplied by July 31. This will amount to a total of 517 million doses supplied from January 2021 to July 31, 2021, it said.

World record

“It should be appreciated that India has crossed the landmark of 440 million (44.19 crore) doses administered, which is the largest number achieved in the world and has been done at quite a brisk pace too. Out of these, 9.6 crore are cases where both the doses have been administered,” the statement said.

In June, a total of 11.97 crore COVID vaccine doses were administered. For this month (as on July 26), a total of 10.62 crore doses have been administered, said the Ministry.

“It is the endeavour of the government to provide vaccination to the eligible citizens in the shortest possible time according to the availability of the vaccines,” the statement said.