Covid: India will vaccinate everyone by Dec 2021, says Prakash Javadekar

Javadekar hit out at Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, who hours earlier, had pointed out that less than 3 per cent of India's population had received both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Amid rising criticism of the Centre’s Covid vaccination drive, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, on Friday, said India will vaccinate its entire population by the end of this year. 
 

Javadekar hit out at Congress Member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi, who hours earlier, had pointed out that less than 3 per cent of India’s population has been fully vaccinated or received both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. 
 

"India's vaccination will be completed before 2021. The Health Ministry has given a blueprint for how 1.08 billion people, with 2.16 billion doses, will get vaccinated before December 2021. Rahulji, if you’re concerned about vaccination, then pay attention to Congress-ruled states. There is a mess. They are not taking the quota given to them for 18-44-year-olds from May 1,” Javadekar said. 
 

Various media reports have pointed out that at the current rate of vaccine delivery, it will take India till February 2022 to vaccinate 300 million people, just 20% of its population. 

During a press conference earlier in the day, Gandhi had said that going by the current pace of vaccination, the entire inoculation exercise will take till 2024 to complete.
 

"The prime minister created space for Covid through his actions, he is responsible for the second wave," Gandhi said.
 

The Centre’s Covid vaccination drive has come under immense criticism because of the slowing pace of vaccination since April. Medical experts have pointed out that India was too late in placing orders with vaccine manufacturers. India placed its first order for Covid-19 vaccines only in January this year, while most nations had been placing orders since mid-2020. 
 

The Indian government’s think tank NITI Aayog, on Thursday, in a myth-busting exercise, claimed that the Centre had proactively eased the entry of foreign vaccines into the country. However, in February, the expert panel under India’s drug regulator had declined to recommend emergency use authorisation for Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine. Pfizer subsequently withdrew its application. As Covid cases swelled in India, on April 13, the government waived the condition of phase 2 and 3 clinical trials in the country for vaccines cleared by the US, EU, UK and Japanese regulators and listed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
 

On Friday, Javadekar countered the Congress’s criticism of the Centre’s Covid vaccination efforts by referring to the ‘Congress’ toolkit, an online document several leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claim was devised by the Congress to malign Prime Minister Narendra Modi.