Daily shots hit record as case slide continues

With over 8.8 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines administered on Monday, India set a new record for the highest ever number of single-day vaccinations since the start of the drive on January 16, the Union health ministry said, even as national daily infections have again started dropping with the outbreak beginning to contract in the state of Kerala, the most recent infection hotspot.

The central government attributed the increase in the pace of daily vaccination to the availability of shots, “advance visibility of supply” to states and Union territories which enabled them to plan better, as well as the “streamlining” of the overall supply chain.

According to government data, 560 million doses have been administered to 435 million people across India till Tuesday evening. This translates to over 46% of all adults in the country having been administered at least one dose of the vaccine – 33% of India’s adults have been partially vaccinated, while another 13.3% have received both shots of the vaccine, data shows.

On Monday, 8.8 million doses were administered across the country – the highest ever, according to government data. To be sure, this occurred a day after daily vaccinations dropped to just 2 million on Sunday. The drop on Sunday, however, was expected as vaccination numbers generally drop over weekends and holidays (Sunday was also Independence Day).

“88 lakh India achieves the highest single-day record in #COVID19 vaccine doses. Yesterday will go down in the history of the world’s #LargestVaccineDrive. Congratulations [India],” tweeted Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya.

The previous record for single-day doses was set on June 21 when around 8.6 million jabs were administered after the new phase of universalisation of Covid-19 vaccination commenced.

To be sure, the seven-day average of daily dose administration still remains patchy. The current rate, despite Monday’s record numbers, remains much below peak capacity exhibited in the past – 5.7 million daily doses have been administered on average in the last seven days against a peak of 6.3 million daily doses for the week ended June 26, data shows. However, that this number is rising again is a good sign.

Health ministry officials said they expect a further increase in inoculation rates in the coming weeks.

“With vaccine supplies and logistical arrangements gradually improving, the daily numbers are going to go further up. It was expected. We have the capacity and capability to do more in a single day and it will see further increase in coming weeks,” a government official aware of the matter said on condition of anonymity.

This rise in vaccinations is particularly significant as it comes at a time when cases have again started dropping. The seven-day average of new infections, which denotes a region’s Covid-19 case curve, has now dropped to 36,126 cases a day for the week ending August 16 – the lowest this has touched in the country since March 20, or in 149 days. At its peak during India’s brutal second wave, this number soared to 391,819 cases a day for the week ending May 9, according to HT’s dashboard.

For two-and-a-half months after the May 9 peak, India’s Covid curve was witnessing a near-steady drop which was briefly halted in the last week of July by an abrupt rise of infections in Kerala. For the week ended July 25, average daily cases in India dropped to 38,007, but this number started rising and touched 40,817 for the week ended August 1 – a rise that was pushed almost entirely by numbers from Kerala, which still accounts for more than half of all new infections in the country.

These findings were echoed in the epidemiological estimates conducted by epiforecasts.io, a website that assesses temporal variations in transmission in different countries, that showed that India’s overall effective reproduction number (Rt) has dropped to 0.92. An Rt of more than 1 means an outbreak is expanding in a region, while that below 1 denotes a contraction. Kerala had an Rt of 0.95.

Government experts said an increase in vaccination rate may improve the chances of the country being able to avert a potential third Covid wave.

“It depends on how many of our people are protected, and how many have been exposed to the virus. The vaccination drive is successfully progressing and we are hopeful that will soon be able to immunise a majority of our population that will be a big factor in determining that we don’t see a third wave. Also, even if we see a third wave, it is a small one,” Dr Himanshu Chauhan, joint director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), said in a video statement.

Independent experts, however, stressed that vaccination may not immediately help in pandemic control but would prove beneficial in the long run.

“Our expectations of pandemic control require revision and I don’t think we have done the distinction between healthcare expectation and public health expectation. The healthcare piece will be affected more by vaccination than pandemic control as defined by how we currently use indicators,” said Dr Gagandeep Kang, one of country’s top vaccinologist from Christian Medical College, Vellore.