'Mind the gap': Rahul Gandhi takes fresh dig at India's COVID-19 vaccination drive

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took another swipe at India's COVID-19 vaccination drive on Saturday morning, sharing a graph of a culiminative vaccination tacker. Highlighting the distance between the target vaccination rate and actual vaccination rate needed to avoid the third COVID-19 wave, Rahul Gandhi quipped 'mind the gap'.' The report released by a news media organisation claims that the vaccinations in India are 27% below the target needed to avoid another possible infection wave.

'Where are vaccines?': Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi's 'mind the gap' remark comes hours after he was pulled up by BJP leaders over his claims on the availability of COVID-19 vaccines in India. On July 2, the Wayanad MP had taken to Twitter and alleged inconsistencies in the vaccination drive saying-- 'July has come but vaccines haven't.' His 'where are vaccines' statement was fact-checked by Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan who pointed out details of the vaccine allocation for July. The Centre will make a whopping 12 crore vaccines available to states for the month of July, as per the details shared by Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Giriraj Singh.

Details of India's vaccination drive

On June 28, India surpassed the United States in a total number of doses administered to top the vaccination charts with over 34 crore doses. According to the Health Ministry, India has been vaccinating 50,00,000 individuals every day on an average since June 21 which is equivalent to vaccinating the entire country of Norway, every day. 

Interestingly, 90.9 percent of frontline workers in the country have been jabbed with at least the first dose of the vaccine while 1.74 crore doses have been administered to healthcare workers. A total of 2.7 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have given to frontline workers. Meanwhile, 9.65 crore doses have been given to people in the age bracket of 18-44 years and 19.91 crore doses have been administered to people above 45 years.

The average daily vaccination climbed to 39.89 lakh doses in June itself since the Centre took over COVID-19 vaccine procurement and supplies of domestically produced vaccines. As of July 3, India's vaccination coverage exceeds 34.41 crore.