Nearly 58 lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the last 24 hours, with more than 2.30 crore balance and unutilised doses still available with the States and Union Territories, and private hospitals, to be administered, noted a Health Ministry press release issued on Friday.
Speaking on the vaccination drive across the Southeast Asia region Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, World Health Organization (WHO), said that countries across the region were making unprecedented efforts to reach more and more people with life-saving COVID-19 vaccines, demonstrating their commitment to containing the pandemic at the earliest. “We must continue these and also, stringently implement public health and social measures,” she said.
More than half a billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the WHO South-East Asia Region, with more vaccine doses becoming available and countries scaling up efforts to rapidly expand coverage amid a recurrent surge in cases, noted a release issued by the WHO.
Dr. Khetrapal Singh added, “COVID-19 vaccines are an important tool in our fight against the pandemic as they are effective, even against Variants of Concern, in preventing severe disease, hospitalisation, and death.”
As of August 6, 618.5 million doses have been administered. As many as 146 million people have received two vaccine doses and are fully vaccinated.
The maximum — 489 million doses — have been administered in India, which reached 8.6 million people on day 1 of its reinvigorated campaign in June, the release said.
“Commendable efforts are being made by countries. With more doses available in recent weeks through COVAX, all possible efforts need to be made to expand COVID-19 vaccination coverage even further,” Dr. Khetrapal Singh said, adding that nearly 90% of all vaccine doses available in the region had been utilised.
Countries in the region are administering Astra Zeneca, Covaxin, Janssen, Moderna, Sinopharm, Sinovac, Sputnik V and Pfizer vaccines following emergency use authorisation being granted by their respective national regulatory authorities.
