With a fresh spurt in COVID cases across the country, the number of “precautionary” or booster doses administered increased by 44.3 per cent during the past week as compared to the previous week.
Official figures show that about 47.5 lakh third doses were given in the first 15 days of June, while 41.5 lakh were given in the last 15 days of May. The country recorded 12,213 new Covid cases on Thursday as against 7,240 cases last Thursday – hospitalizations and deaths remain low.
The data also shows that as per the analysis of data on the CoWIN portal, the five metros saw an average increase of 77.9 per cent in the number of booster doses administered during the last week, mainly driven by a 212.5 per cent increase in Chennai.
The spike comes at a time when the government is emphasizing on covering the elderly population through the Har Ghar Dastak Abhiyan 2.0, which started this month. It is also looking to increase coverage of the first two doses among children aged 12 to 17 years.
A large proportion of the increase in booster doses for adults under 60 is likely to be recorded in metropolitan and urban centres, which have a higher number of private medical facilities. The government’s free vaccination campaign for booster doses only covers people above 60 years of age and health care and frontline workers.
As per the data, there has been an increase of one COVID in Mumbai in the last two weeks with a steady increase in the precautionary dose coverage during the door-to-door campaign. The number of booster shots administered this week increased by 31 percent compared to the previous week.
Bengaluru also saw a week-on-week increase during June – a growth of 6.8 per cent in the first seven days of June and 49.2 per cent during the second week as compared to the previous week.
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Fluctuations were recorded in June’s booster numbers in Delhi and Kolkata. Delhi saw a decline of 5.9 per cent in the first week of June and 32.4 per cent thereafter. According to CoWIN data, Kolkata saw a decline of 9.7 per cent in the first week of June and a rise of 64.3 per cent thereafter.
The data shows that the cumulative vaccine dose nationwide increased by 41.8 percent during the past week, which is less than the increase seen for booster doses.
In metros, the rate of increase in booster doses was higher than the total number of doses in Delhi and Kolkata – the capital saw a 15.8 per cent increase in the total number of doses and Kolkata 55.01 per cent.