However, despite the doses being made free, the coverage has not been very high. Only 10.4% of the people who received their first doses in Delhi have received their third precaution dose since the drive was started in January this year. (Express file photo)With the government’s 75-day free Covid-19 precaution dose drive kicking off on Friday, so far, Delhi has administered 18.9 lakh precaution doses, of which 54.9% were for those between the ages of 18 to 59 years, defying the national trend of a higher proportion of precaution doses administered in the elderly. Only 16.7% of the total 5.43 lakh precaution doses administered nationally till Friday were for those between 18 and 59 years’ of age, although the age bracket has a higher number of beneficiaries.
Delhi on Friday saw a slight increase in the number of precaution doses administered – 22,262 as compared to just over 19,000 third doses administered daily on average over the previous seven days.
Two weeks after the Centre opened up precaution doses for all adults at private centres on payment in April, the Delhi government had made it free for all adults at government vaccination centres. This could be the reason that Friday’s numbers were not significantly high as Delhi has seen peaks of over 36,000 within the last one month as well.
To compare, India administered over 15.5 lakh precaution doses on the first day of the drive as compared to an average 5.5 lakh precaution doses administered daily over the previous seven days, according to data from the government’s CoWIN app.
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However, despite the doses being made free, the coverage has not been very high. Only 10.4% of the people who received their first doses in Delhi have received their third precaution dose since the drive was started in January this year. Coverage of the second dose has been much better with 84.5% of those who got their first dose having received their second dose as well.
Nationally, the offer of free precaution doses, along with the government’s decision a few days ago to reduce the gap between the second and precaution dose to six months from the previous nine months, is likely to lead to an increase in the uptake of precaution doses over the next two months.
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