A health worker administers a dose of Covid-19 vaccine to a beneficiary in New Delhi on Monday. (Express Photo: Amit Mehra) Delhi administered just over 65,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses on Tuesday, of which 78 per cent were in either children between the ages of 15 to 17 or those between the ages of 18 and 45, as per the data from the government’s CoWIN portal. The numbers in older age groups, for whom the vaccination drive started first, have tapered off over the last two weeks.
The Indian Express had earlier reported that the vaccination figures in Delhi were dipping as the capital had reached saturation in older age groups.
As many as 13,789 doses were given to eligible children on Tuesday, the numbers picking up slightly with the city starting to administer the second doses for them Monday onwards. At least 8,15,121 children from Delhi have received their first dose, meaning the coverage among children has gone up to 78.3 per cent. Officials said that this will go up in the coming days as the government starts more school-based camps for the second dose.
Only 9,356 precaution doses were administered in Delhi on Tuesday as per CoWIN, with a total of 292,175 doses administered since the drive opened up for the third dose on January 10. This means 30 per cent of the eligible 9,70,000 healthcare workers, frontline workers, and those over the age of 60 years with comorbidities in Delhi have received precaution doses.
These numbers will go up in a couple of months, according to officials. “First, not all of them have become eligible together; the dose has to be given nine months from the date of the second dose, so they are becoming eligible in a staggered manner. Even then, many of those who are eligible got Covid-19 during the current surge in cases, so they will be able to get the shots only three months later,” a Delhi government official said.
So far, Delhi has administered a total of 29.7 million shots since the vaccination drive was rolled out last January 16, of which over 17 million are first doses, 12.4 million second doses, and 292,175 precaution doses, as per the data.
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