NEW DELHI – India launched a massive vaccination campaign this weekend, hoping to use its unique skills to mobilize millions of people to make rapid progress in its efforts to protect its population from Covid-19.
Hundreds of thousands of health workers – the first people to receive vaccines – lined up across the country to get the shots, in a national effort that leveraged the talents of millions of people to make, deliver, register, manage , monitors and protects the shootings, said Indian Health Minister Harsh Vardhan.
India is targeting around 300,000 doses a day and will increase vaccinations depending on the amount of vaccine available, Mr Vardhan said. The country aims to inoculate 300 million of its 1.3 billion inhabitants by August. Over the weekend, it was still out of step to reach that target, with about 191,000 people receiving fire on Saturday and 17,000 on Sunday, when the campaign was closed in most states.
“This is a huge exercise,” said Mr Vardhan, who has written a book on India’s efforts to eradicate polio. “India has tremendous experience in managing these issues.”
While some countries have struggled with the scale and complexity of national vaccination, India is confident that it can do better because of its experience inoculating the poor and maintaining electoral infrastructure for nearly a billion voters.