India is celebrating a major milestone of one billion Covid 19 jabs within nine months. After China, India administered the second-highest number of doses of covid vaccines in the world.
On the occasion of the one billion vaccination drive, honorable PM Narendra Modi explained the incredible journey of the vaccination drive from anxiety to assurance. How people did not show trust in India’s self-made vaccines and got panicked. He further tweeted, the country has registered history and has a protective shield of 100 crore vaccine doses to safeguard us from a once in a century pandemic.
January 16th, 2021, the vaccination process started, and 3,006 vaccination centres were prepared to give Jab and every centre offered either Covaxin or Covishield. Manish Kumar, a sanitation worker of All India Institute Medical Science (AIIMS) Delhi, was the first person who was vaccinated and who was actually nervous to take Jab.
The government of India was prepared to celebrate the milestone by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi by making special announcements at airports and railway stations to thank the health workers, and also monuments lit up in the national flag colours to honour this achievement.
Health Minister Mankush Mandaviya tweeted #vaccine century and he congratulated India in his tweet. He further said that Indians have achieved a landmark milestone of 100 crores Covid 19 vaccination doses, saluting our Covid warriors, and the Healthcare and frontline workers who worked day and night to help India achieve it.”
“Congratulations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the scientists, health workers and people of India, on your efforts to protect the vulnerable populations from Covid-19 and achieve #VaccinEquity targets,” Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO wrote on twitter.
As of now according to the reports, nearly 75 percent of the population received the first dose of Jab, and 31 percent of the adult group is fully vaccinated.
The vaccination doses provided daily on a seven days moving average basis had slowed down from 8.4 billion to 5 million at the end of August. For the government, the main challenge is to guarantee that everyone takes their second dosage on time. As of now, India has vaccinated 1 billion of its population successfully and is expecting to vaccinate the whole population by mid-2022.
India has become one of the most critically affected countries in the world. Many scientists and researchers worked day and night to develop vaccines that could help the country to fight with the virus.

In September 2020, the Minister of health and family welfare Harsh Vardhan declared the nation is planning for the endorsement of vaccines in India will begin to distribute from the first quarter of 2021 and he stated, the first beneficiaries will be frontline workers who are dealing with COVID patients.
The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) on 1st January authorized the emergency use of the Covishield (Oxford-AstraZeneca). In a meantime, DCGI also authorized the Covaxin (BB152) for local use which is produced by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV).
Some of the vaccines are produced by India, i.e., (Gennova Biopharmaceuticals, Mynvax, Biological E, Oxford – AstraZeneca Vaccine, Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D, and Covaxin.) in which India has been using more Covishield and Covaxin for vaccinating propose. In India, Covaxin was the first manufactured vaccine by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the National Institute of Virology.
From July 2020, the process of clinical trials for Covaxin was started in the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) in Hyderabad. Bharat Biotech for Covaxin and Zydus Cadila was putting efforts to give their best to bring out the vaccine for the pandemic. The six Indian companies and the government of India worked for the COVID-19 vaccine.
In July 2021, Bharat Biotech said, Phase-III trials of the vaccine showed the effectiveness of 93.4% against the Covid severe symptoms and boosted people’s acceptance of Covaxin. The data showed that there was a 65.2% protection against the Delta variant which was first identified in India and leads to the world’s highest death tolls.
In August India gave 5.9 million average vaccines every day compared to 4.3 million vaccines in July. During the vaccine drive, the government and the people as well faced lots of problems.
Several states have complained that they don’t have enough vaccines to continue the drive. Many states stopped giving Covaxin to the people just to ensure that there will be availability for those people who have to take the second dose of the vaccine.
The vaccines in private sectors i.e., (Apollo, Fortis, Manipal, Max) charge the amount which ranges from 700-900 rs for Covishield produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) and 1,250-1,500 rs for Covaxin produced by Bharat Biotech (BB). Centers initially acquired both the vaccines at Rs 150 and supplied them to state governments and private hospitals. Delhi, which administered one lakh doses per day, is out of stock after four to five days.
In May, there were rising Covid cases across the country, and the Maharashtra health minister announced that the CEO of Serum Institute of India told, the company was not able to supply Covishield. Delhi government decided to close atleast 400 Covaxin vaccination sites due to shortage of Jabs as a result of which many people were unavailable to get the second dose of Covaxin on time.
In Telangana, with the non-availability of stock, the government was maintaining the process for only 45 years, age group. Meanwhile, Kerala too had complained as he requested for one crore doses as they only received three lakh doses.
The survey was conducted by the Covid Symptom Survey (CSS) on Facebook, in partnership with the University of Maryland, in 200 countries including India. The CSS asked the particular questions:- ‘If a vaccine to prevent Covid-19 were offered to you today, would you choose to get vaccinated?”
On July 31st, Karnataka became the first state to cross the 3 crore vaccination doses mark in Bangalore. In August, Bhubaneswar claimed to be the first city to be fully vaccinated in Odisha. Initially, In September, Himachal Pradesh was the first state to administer its first dose of the vaccine to 100% of its population.
The top five reasons for not taking vaccine includes in India “waiting for others to get it first” (42 percent), “other people need it more than me” (35 percent), “fear of any side-effects” (34 percent), “vaccines won’t work” (21 percent) and “don’t believe in the vaccine” (11 percent). Contrary to popular perception, the proportion of people choosing “high price of vaccines” and “religious belief” as reasons to opt-out remains very less.
By P Veena
Nicely put!!