NEW DELHI (AP) – India distributed 25 million COVID-19 vaccines in a special campaign to mark the anniversary of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who turned 71 on Friday.
This initiative raised the total number of vaccinations in the country to more than 790 million, the Health Ministry explained on Saturday.
According to the Minister of Health, Mansukh Mandaviya, the measure was “a golden chapter (…) written in the history of the country and the world.”
Only China has administered more doses of the coronavirus vaccine than India. Beijing said this week that it has put in more than 2.16 billion and that 1 billion Chinese have already completed the pattern.
In India, a country of about 1.4 billion people, more than 62% of adults who could be immunized have at least one dose, and about 21% have already received both. Health officials said their goal is to administer more than 1 billion doses by mid-October.
India has reported more than 33 million coronavirus cases and 444,529 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Currently, the nation records more than 30,000 new COVID-19 infections a day.
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