Coronavirus India Update: Prime Minister Modi Launches Covid Vaccination Drive

India launched one of the world’s largest coronavirus vaccination drives on Saturday, setting in motion a complex deployment plan aimed at stemming the wide spread of infections across a nation of more than 1.3 billion people.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the programme with a speech addressing more than 3,000 centers across India where the first shots were to be given.

“These vaccines will help India win the battle against the virus,” Modi said, adding that Indians should get the shots and not pay heed to any anti-vaccine propaganda.

India’s business and financial hub Mumbai, once the country’s coronavirus hotspot, is building facilities to store 1 crore doses of the vaccine as it aims to open fully from a strict lockdown.

The municipal commission will initially run the vaccination programme at eight centers, which can inject 12,000 people a day. The capacity will rise to 50,000 people daily within a week, subject to availability of vaccines and people’s response.

Each centre aims to inoculate at least 100 recipients today. Recipients do not have the option of choosing which vaccine they will receive. Each centre will administer only one of the two vaccines approved by the drug regulator of India. The government says its aimed at ensuring that there is no confusion when the second dosage is administered after 28 days.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will kick-off the drive at 10:30 a.m. through a virtual conference.

India is embarking on one of the world’s largest coronavirus vaccination drives even as the world hits a frightening Covid-19 benchmark, with 20 lakh people dead and few expectations for infections to start dropping soon. The global coronavirus case count reached 9.38 crore as of Saturday morning.

President-elect Joe Biden called on all Americans to wear masks in public for 100 days, saying it was “stupid” that face coverings had become a political issue. The Covid-19 variant that emerged in the U.K. and sparked concerns of faster spread could become dominant in the U.S. as soon as March, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The U.S. stepped up its claims that the Covid-19 virus could have emerged from a Chinese laboratory and not through contact with infected animals. South Korea is extending social-distancing measures as the number of cases creeps higher.