To vaccinate entire population by Dec 31, India must give 10.4 mn doses a day

Friday’s push came at a time when the daily dose administration was slowly declining across the country. In the week leading to Friday, the seven-day average of daily doses had dropped to 6.9 million from a peak of 8.5 million (in the week ended September 1).

The days that followed Friday appear to be confirming suspicions that the push may have been a one-day affair. Daily doses across the country have averaged at 7.5 million a day between Saturday and Monday, with numbers dropping back to normal in states such as Gujarat, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka, which had seen their daily dose administration on Friday average jump six to 10 times their previous seven-day average, according to data from Union health ministry’s Co-WIN dashboard.

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And while Friday’s numbers pushed the national seven-day average to a record high of around 9.3 million doses a day, whether this number sustains in the longer run will be the metric to track in coming days. This is because while the pace of the drive has improved, particularly from the low rates seen in previous months, India still remains off-course from its stated target of vaccinating its entire adult population of 940 million by the end of 2021, a commitment the government has made in a submission to the Supreme Court.

According to government data, as of Monday night, the total number of doses administered in the country has now crossed 817 million, with 208 million people being fully vaccinated and another 400 having received a single dose of the vaccine.

Some simple math shows why the task ahead remains strenuous.

While India’s vaccination drive started on January 16, it wasn’t till May 1 that all adults were made eligible to get shots. Since then, it has taken the country 143 days to administer 817 million doses. To fully vaccinate all adults in the country by the end of the year, India needs to administer around 1.88 billion doses in total. It has taken India 143 days to cover 43% of its target, and the remaining 1.06 billion doses need to be administered in the year’s remaining 102 days. This means that to cover the entire population by the end of the year, the country needs to administer 10.4 million doses every single day till December 31.

If the drive progresses at the pace that it has in the three days since the PM’s birthday (an average of 7.5 million doses, as stated above), then India will miss its year-end target by close to 300 million doses. Even at the current seven-day average (9.3 million doses, and the highest ever recorded pace), which is bumped up due to Friday’s massive push, the country will miss its target by more than 100 million doses.

This calculation, of course, discards the on-the-ground problems that may hit the vaccination drive such as vaccine hesitancy, or supply constraints, or yet another rise in infections. While India has matched (and exceeded) this required rate on a handful of days (including Friday, where it more than doubled this required rate), it has never been able to do so on a daily basis.

This is where the real challenge lies ahead. Setting records on one-off days may grab bigger headlines, but it is far more important for the country to maintain a daily momentum if it wants to achieve its vaccination target.

Numbers Matter examines Covid-19 trends, in India and globally, through the prism of data. The column is out every Tuesday.