India administers over 54L vaccine doses on day 4 of revised guidelines

The ministry said that 35,44,209 vaccine doses were administered as the first dose and 67,626 vaccine doses given as the second dose to beneficiaries in the 18-44 age group on Thursday.

New Delhi: As many as 18 states and UTs administered more than 10 lakh beneficiaries in the age group of 18-44 years with the first dose of the Covid vaccine even as India administers 54.07 lakh vaccine doses on the fourth day of the revised guidelines for COVID-19 vaccination coming into effect. Health Ministry statistics said that India's cumulative Covid vaccination coverage exceeded 30.72 crores as of Thursday. The ministry said that 35,44,209 vaccine doses were administered as the first dose and 67,626 vaccine doses given as the second dose in the age group of 18-44 years on the day.

"Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have administered more than 10 lakh beneficiaries in the age group 18-44 years for the first dose of Covid vaccine," the ministry said. India had achieved a historic milestone of administering 88 lakh doses in a single day on Monday- day 1 of the Centre's revised guidelines for Covid vaccination.

Meanwhile, a parliamentary committee on Home Affairs will listen to the views of the Ministry of Home Affairs on "Socio-economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic's second wave on Monday. It is worth mentioning that almost all the parliamentary committee's related to various ministers, for quite some time, have taken note of the initiatives taken by the concerned ministries to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Similarly, on Wednesday, a parliamentary standing committee on science and technology, environment, forest and climate change took the view of ICMR's DG Dr Balram Bhargava, principal scientific advisor to Prime Minister K Vijay Raghavan and CSIR's DG Shekhar Mande on Covid-19 vaccine strategy and genomic sequencing.

In the said meeting, committee members asked queries regarding the country's genomic sequencing capacity following the emergence of Delta and Delta plus variants, vaccine procurement and pricing as well as the status of domestic vaccine development.

Referring to child vaccination, Dr Bhargava told the Parliamentary committee that the trial for the same is going on with Covaxin. The committee was also briefed by the experts about the vaccines that are in the process of development and also on the new vaccines that are being explored.