NEW DELHI: India launched a massive vaccination campaign this weekend in hopes of using its unique skills to mobilize millions to make rapid progress in its efforts to protect its population from Covid-19.
Hundreds of thousands of health workers — the first people to receive vaccines — lined up across the country to receive their shots, in a national effort that leveraged the talents of millions of people to make, deliver, register , manage, control and protect shots, said Indian Health Minister Harsh Vardhan.
India sets around 300,000 doses a day and will increase inoculations based on the amount of vaccine available, Vardhan said. The country aims to inoculate 300 million of its 1.3 billion people in August. Over the weekend, it was still outside the pace needed to achieve that goal, with some 191,000 people receiving gunfire on Saturday and 17,000 receiving them on Sunday when the campaign closed in most states.
“This is a huge exercise,” said Vardhan, who wrote a book on India’s efforts to eradicate polio. “India has extensive experience in managing these issues.”
While some countries have struggled with the scale and complexity of the vaccine across the country, India is confident that it can do better thanks to its experience inoculating its poor population and keeping the electoral infrastructure close. of a billion voters.