Monthly availability of 40 cr doses by October; 7 vaccines to ramp up jab drive: Sources

In a potential boost to the nationwide inoculation drive, sources told Republic TV that 40 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be available per month by October. This comes at a time when the novel coronavirus vaccination is gaining pace with 13.45 crore jabs administered in July- a 12.5% increase against June's 11.96 crore inoculations. As per sources, the government is projecting a jab availability of 20 crore doses in August and 25 crore doses in September. 

This will be possible as a total of 7 vaccines are set to be available by October with Biological E's Corbevax, Zydus Cadila's DNA vaccine and Gennova's mRNA vaccine likely to get approval soon. The government has already hinted at vaccinating the entire adult population i.e nearly 90 crore people by December itself. Meanwhile, sources revealed that no booster dose is required for fully vaccinated individuals at least at this juncture. 

This assumes significance in the wake of reports that a booster dose was required for persons 6-8 months after they have been administered the second dose of the vaccine. While acknowledging that the private sector procured less than its allocated quota of vaccines from the Serum Institute of India, sources revealed that the Centre stepped in and bought more jabs from the firm. Refuting the notion that there is a shortage in some parts of the country, Republic TV learnt that states have a stock of 5.3 crore novel coronavirus vaccines as of today. 

COVID-19 vaccination in India

Apart from Covishield and Covaxin, the Drugs Controller General of India approved Sputnik V and Moderna on April 12 and June 29 respectively. Moreover, the Union government has declared that those vaccines that have been granted emergency approval for restricted use by USFDA, EMA, UK MHRA, PMDA Japan, or which are listed in WHO (Emergency Use Listing) will be granted emergency use approval in India. Addressing the nation on June 7, PM Modi partially rolled back the decentralized procurement policy and announced that the Centre will procure 75% of the vaccine stock and distribute it to the states for free from June 21. 

Most importantly, this stock is now being used for all adults and not just those aged above 45. So far, 100.6 crore doses of Covaxin and Covishield have been ordered out of which 42.52 crore doses have been supplied. A total of 38,27,92,948 persons have been inoculated whereas 10,81,24,603 of them have received the second dose of the vaccine too.