India's Covid-19 vaccination coverage exceeds 970m

Sanitation worker Manish Kumar, who according to the officials is the first person in the country vaccinated against the COVID-19, receives a dose of Bharat Biotech's COVAXIN during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination campaign at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) hospital in New Delhi, India, 16 January , 2021Reuters

With the administration of a total of 836,118 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India's Covid-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 972.3 million, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of India said on Saturday.

As per provisional reports, till 7.00am today, 972,377,045 doses have been administered in the country so far through 9,605,482 sessions.

Of the total, some 10,375,703 health care workers received the first dose and a total of 9,068,232 health workers have already got the second dose.

In the meantime, some 18,361,275 front line workers were administered the first dose and 15,490,253 were given the second dose of the vaccine.

According to the health ministry, 391,451,891 people in the age group 18-44 years were administered the first dose while 108,540,506 were given the second dose.

Also, in the age group of 45-59 years, 167,304,569 people have received the first dose and 850,397,182 have received the second dose whereas for the people over 60 years, 105,520,693 were administered with the first dose and 6,08,66,741 were given the second dose.

Meanwhile, 15,981 new Covid-19 cases were reported in the last 24 hours. The daily new cases were reported to be less than 20,000 for the past eight days now.

With this the active caseload is presently 201,632, which is the lowest in 218 days and presently constitute 0.59 per cent of the country's total positive cases.

The recovery of 17,861 patients in the last 24 hours has increased the cumulative tally of recovered patients to 33,399,961.

Consequently, India's recovery rate stands at 98.08 per cent, which is currently at its highest peak since March, 2020.

Also, the weekly positivity rate is at 1.44 per cent which is less than three per cent for the last 113 days now.

The daily positivity rate is reported to be 1.73 per cent and has remained below three per cent for the last 47 days and below five per cent for 130 consecutive days now.

The testing capacity across the country continues to be expanded. In the last 24 hours, a total of 923,003 tests were conducted, talking the cumulative tests conducted so far to 589,835,258.