COVID: Govt dismisses reports on missing vaccination target, says 'facts misrepresented'

The Centre on Tuesday dismissed reports that claimed that India had missed the end-July target of administering 50 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses as "ill-informed and misrepresenting". The central government refuted media reports regarding the same and asserted that over 51.60 crore vaccine doses have been supplied from January to July 31. It informed that the states and UTs are being supplied with enough vaccine doses.

Claims of failure to meet vaccine doses target is misinformed: Health Ministry

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a statement reacting to the recent media reports alleging that the country will miss its coronavirus vaccine target. The ministry, referring to reports claiming the country to fail to administer 50 crore doses by July-end, said that they have ‘clearly misrepresented the facts.’ The reports had pointed out that the government had stated in May of making 51.6 crore vaccine shots available by the end of this month.

Referring to the same, the ministry said that the figures of 51.6 crore 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 51.6 crore vaccine doses will indeed be supplied from January 2021 to 31st July 2021," the ministry said.

It further claimed that the vaccine doses are being supplied to the states and UTs as per advance allocation. "Vaccines are supplied in various schedules throughout a month. Therefore, the availability of 516 million doses until the end of a particular month does not mean that every dose supplied until that month will be consumed or administered. There would be supplies in pipeline, which should be available for next few days till the next supplies of vaccine doses materialise in a particular State/District/Sub District to keep vaccination going on," the ministry said.

Total of 51.7 crore vaccine doses will be supplied by July 31: Centre

According to the ministry, a cumulative total of 45.7 crore coronavirus vaccine doses have been supplied to the states and UTs from January 2021 to date. It also said that an additional 6.03 crore doses are expected to be supplied by July 31. This will amount to a total of 51.7 crore doses supplied during the time period.

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

The ministry further added that a total of 11.97 crore doses was administered in June 2021. Similarly, for July 2021 (as of July 26), a total of 10.62 crore doses have already been administered. “The government endeavours to provide vaccination to eligible citizens in the shortest possible time as per the availability of the COVID vaccines”, the ministry said. 

Image: PTI

With Inputs from ANI