India crosses 75 cr doses, WHO hails record pace

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 13

As India crossed the milestone of administering 75 crore Covid vaccine doses nationally, the World Health Organisation on Monday hailed the inoculation drive.

Conditional drone use for vax delivery

• The Ministry of Civil Aviation on Monday said it had granted conditional permission to the Indian Council of Medical Research to use drones in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Manipur and Nagaland to deliver vaccines beyond the visual line of sight
• The use of drones will be allowed up to a height of 3,000 m to deliver vaccines

In a message, WHO Regional Director (South East Asia) Poonam Khetarpal said, “WHO congratulates India for scaling up Covid-19 vaccination drive at an unprecedented pace. While it took 85 days to administer the first 100 million doses, India reached 750 million doses from 650 million doses in just 13 days.”

Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya also hailed the landmark with sources saying that at this rate nearly half of the Indian adults could be fully inoculated by December this year. Cumulative doses administered so far are 75,10,41,391. The number of first doses administered is 56,95,77,696 and second doses is 18,14,63,695.

More than 67 lakh (67,04,768) doses were administered till 5.30 pm today. The country has also administered one shot to more than 99 pc health and frontline workers.