After a year full of panic, stress, depression, and dealing with uncertainties, finally the vaccination drive to fight against the fatal novel coronavirus has begun almost all around the world. While some countries are competing to produce the most effective vaccine in the world, others, like our country India, are producing already approved vaccines in large numbers for themselves and also for exporting them to the countries in need of it.
Although the target is to vaccinate each and every citizen in every country, the pace of vaccination is different everywhere. Most of the approved vaccines are to be administered twice, i.e two doses of the vaccine are required for it to be fully effective. In India, there are two vaccines that are being used currently: Covaxin (by Bharat Biotech) and Covishield (by AstraZeneca). Both require two doses, the second one to be administered 28 days after the first dose.
The vaccination Drive against COVID-19 in India began on 16th January 2021 and the priority was given to the frontline workers, who are prone to contract the virus. Since March, people over the age of 45 years with comorbidities and people over the age of 60 started receiving the vaccination. As per a report by the Johns Hopkins University, 69,13,587 Indians were fully vaccinated by 19th March 2021, which is 0.51% of the total Indian population. However, India stands second amongst the top 20 countries by the number of persons fully vaccinated. The first on the list is the United States of America (USA), where more than 3.90 crores (3,90,81,330) people have been fully vaccinated, which is 11.94% of the total population. Vaccines in-use in the USA include the ones by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson/Jassen, two other vaccines are yet to get a green signal.
A country that follows India is Israel with 44,80,810 people, which is actually half (50.43%) of their total population. The country’s most administered shots were Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. Other countries in order, including the aforementioned, as per the highest to lowest number of people fully vaccinated are:
However, if we look at the percentage of the total population fully vaccinated, the country that is leading in, Israel with approximately 51% of the population, followed by Seychelles with 29%, Monaco with 19%, Chile and Bahrain with 15% each, and United States stands 5th with 13% of its population fully vaccinated.
Recently, some European and other countries also suspended the use of the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine due to its reports of blood clotting in people who got the dose. Some of these countries were- Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Sweden, and Latvia. Even so, in contrast to this, the World Health Organization (WHO) disregarded the claims and ensured that the vaccine is safe to be used.
Therefore, although the vaccine roll-out has begun in many countries, studies related to the same are still going on. Many countries are also working on other vaccines, for example, India is working on an Intranasal vaccine, that can be administered through the nasal. Although one thing that ETV Bharat Sukhibhava will keep reminding you is that the fight against the novel coronavirus is still on and following all the preventive measures is extremely important to stay safe and healthy.
