New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry data on Saturday reported that India's COVID-19 vaccination drive, which began on January 16, has covered nearly 14 lakh people already. The mission of administering the two-dose jab accelerated to over three lakh people per day yesterday, according to the Union Health Ministry's data.
The average number of vaccinations per day during the past week has been 1,98,656, data collated till yesterday showed. A total of 13,90,592 persons were vaccinated to date and 3,47,058 persons vaccinated on a single day.
"Total number of samples tested up to 22nd January is 19,09,85,119 including 8,37,095 samples tested yesterday," said ICMR.
On January 16, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched India's massive Covid-19 vaccination drive using two vaccines namely Covishield and Covaxin. While the former was developed by researchers at Oxford University in collaboration with pharma major AstaZeneca, Pune-based , The Serum Institute of India has been manufacturing it in India.
Wheras, Covaxin is being produced by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research.
In phase 1 of the inoculation drive, set to be completed by July, one crore health workers followed by 2 crore frontline workers will get the vaccine. In the next one, besides those aged above 50, Prime Minister Modi and all Union and state ministers and lawmakers are likely to get jabbed.