Delhi on cusp of inoculating 10 million with at least one shot

The Capital is closing in on a crucial landmark in its mass Covid-19 inoculation programme with the total number of people who have been administered at least one shot of the vaccine set to cross the 10 million mark in the city.

When seen against Delhi’s estimated adult population, this translates to around two-thirds (66%) of the people above the age of 18 years having been administered a Covid-19 jab. This places the Capital much above the national average of around 55% adults having received at least one vaccine shot, and among the top 10 major states with best population coverage, data shows.

Delhi government officials said they intend to cover the remaining population with vaccines within “two or three months”, and as such are confident of meeting the overall national target of administering both doses to all adults by the end of this year.

“We have already made arrangements for vaccinating the entire population of Delhi within two to three months. The only constraint we have is availability of doses. The moment we get sufficient doses, we will quickly vaccinate everyone. Currently it is September, we will surely finish by December,” said a Delhi government spokesperson.

Till Friday night, according to data from Union health ministry’s Co-WIN dashboard, Delhi administered around 13.9 million doses to 9,937,740 people (5,949,076 people partially vaccinated, and 3,988,664 fully vaccinated). According to projections by Census of India’s National Commission on Population, Delhi has an adult population of around 15 million people, which means that 26.5% of the city’s adults have received both doses of the vaccine and 39.5% are partially vaccinated.

To be sure, despite the better-than-average population coverage than the national average, Delhi’s pace of daily dose administration still remains patchy.

The seven-day average of daily dose administered in the city peaked with a daily average of 155,787 daily doses for the week ending July 2, but then numbers dropped under 50,000 doses a day by the end of July -- largely due to supply constraints. Despite improvement seen in recent weeks, the Capital’s pace of daily administration remains 23% below peak levels exhibited by the city till date, data shows. This drop in pace is particularly significant right now because the national dose rate is currently soaring at record levels.

Experts said Delhi’s high coverage, along with the findings from recent serological surveys give the city’s residents a good chance of evading another massive Covid wave.

“Delhi has an eligible population of 1.62 crores and we have already given shot to almost 1 crore people. In addition, Delhi also has a very high seropositivity. This will protect Delhi from a severe surge in cases,” said Dr Suneela Garg, professor of community medicine at Maulana Azad Medical College and member of the Lancet Commission on Covid-19 in India.

She said the pace of vaccination is likely to pick up further with more vaccine doses becoming available. “India will get 135 crore doses of the vaccine between August and December, with more and more vaccines becoming available we will start seeing 1 crore doses being administered each day.”

Experts, however, say that the element of vaccine hesitancy may start playing a role in turnout numbers as coverage crosses a certain high threshold. At that point, people who are reluctant to get shots may not come forward anymore – a phenomenon currently being experienced by high vaccine coverage countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, where daily dose administration has dropped.

Officials from Delhi government’s health department say that they witnessed such hesitancy among the elderly when coverage exceeded 50-50%, but so far have not seen reluctance in overall turnouts.

“The demand for vaccination among the young people is still there; after we covered around 50 to 60% of the population above the age of 60 years, the demand fell drastically and people needed to be motivated to take the shot. That is not the case currently; most of our vaccination centres run full. In fact, the coverage among those over the age of 60 years continues to be poor – just over 60% have received their first dose and a little over 40% have received their second dose even though their vaccination opened up in March,” the official, who did not wish to be identified, said.

The official said special camps were being organised to reach out to these people and counter this issue.