Fact Check: Will India miss vaccination target for July end?

New Delhi, July 27: Several media reports have claimed that India, which has undertaken one of the world's largest vaccination drives so far will miss a target to administer over a half billion COVID-19 vaccine doses by July as Bharat Biotech struggles to boost output.

The government had aimed for 516 million shots by the end of July. It wants to inoculate all its estimated 944 million adults by December.

To achieve the target, authorities will have to more than triple average daily vaccinations to 14 million doses. But that will not be possible, based on the latest supply projections for Bharat Biotech's Covaxin vaccine, reported Rueters.

However, the government has termed these reports are ill-informed and have clearly misrepresented the facts.

"There have been some recent media reports alleging that India will miss end-July 2021 target of administering half a billion doses. The reports also mention that the Government had stated in May 2021 that it would make 516 million shots available by end of July 2021. These reports are ill-informed and have clearly misrepresented the facts," the ministry said in a statement.

"The figures of 516 million vaccine doses might have been picked up from various sources which informed about the likely availability of the vaccine doses from January 2021 to the end of July, 2021. The facts are that a total of more than 516 million vaccine doses will indeed be supplied from Jan 2021 to 31st July 2021," it added.

"It is also pertinent to mention that Vaccine doses are supplied to the States/UTs as per advance allocation and advance information to them. Vaccines are supplied in various schedules throughout a month. Therefore, availability of 516 million doses till end of a particular month does not mean that every dose supplied till that month is going to be consumed/ administered. There would be supplies in pipeline, which should be available for next few days till the next supplies of vaccine doses materialize in a particular State/District/Sub District to keep vaccination going on," it further added.

As on date, a cumulative total of 457 million doses have been supplied to the States/ UTs from January 2021 till date and an additional 60.3 million doses are expected to be supplied by 31st July. This will amount to a total of 517 million doses supplied from January 2021 to 31st July 2021.

It should be appreciated that India has crossed the landmark of 440 million (44.19 crore) doses administered, which is the largest numbers achieved in the world and has been done at quite a brisk pace too. Out of these 9.60 crore are cases where both the doses have been administered.

A total of 11.97 crore doses was administered in June 2021. Similarly, for month of July 2021 (as on 26th July), a total of 10.62 crore doses have already been administered.

It is the endeavour of the Government to provide vaccination to eligible citizens in the shortest possible time as per availability of the COVID vaccines.