In a landmark achievement, India’s cumulative Covid-19 vaccination coverage crossed 100 crore doses on Thursday.

A total of 100 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far to eligible beneficiaries, as per the CoWIN portal at 9:47 am today. India’s Covid-19 vaccination drive was launched on January 16, 2021. Initially, the vaccination was opened for Health Care Workers (HCWs) only.

In a tweet, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya congratulated the country on achieving the feat and said it was the result of the able leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Congratulations to the people&healthcare workers of India. It’s remarkable to reach the 1 billion dose mark for any nation, an achievement in just over 9 months since the vaccination program started in India, Dr. VK Paul, Member-Health, NITI Aayog stated on India crossing 100 crore vaccination.

As per the health ministry data, an average of about 38.43 lakh jabs have been delivered daily over the past week or so.

From February 2, front-line workers were made eligible for vaccination. These included State and Central Police personnel, Armed Force Personnel, Home Guards, Civil Defence & Disaster Management Volunteers, Municipal workers, Prison Staff, PRI Staff and Revenue workers involved in containment and surveillance, Railway Protection Force and election Staff.

The vaccination drive was expanded from March 1 to include persons above 60 years of age and those above 45 years with associated specified 20 comorbidities. It was further expanded to all people above 45 years of age from April 1. From May 1 all persons above 18 years of age were made eligible for Covid-19 vaccination.

India took 85 days to touch the 10-crore vaccination mark, 45 more days to cross the 20-crore mark and 29 more days to reach the 30-crore mark, according to the Union Health Ministry data.

The country took 24 days to reach the 40-crore mark from 30-crore doses and then 20 more days to surpass the 50-crore vaccination mark on August 6. It then took 76 days to go past the 100-crore mark.

The top five states which have administered the highest number of doses are Uttar Pradesh followed by Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh.

India has become the second country after China to reach the 100-crore milestone. But the basic difference between the two nations is accessibility to related data. China claims to have vaccinated over 2.23 billion individuals. It even claimed last month of fully vaccinating over 100 crore people but there is no open-source data accessible to validate it.

On January 3 this year, India gave emergency-use approval to Covishield and Covaxin. Covishield is a two-shot Covid vaccine developed by AstraZeneca-Oxford University.

Pune-based Serum Institute of India is its major producer. On the other hand, Covaxin, also a two-shot vaccine, is completely an indigenous achievement. It is developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech.

On April 12, amid concerns of rapidly scaling up Covid cases and fatalities, India approved the third vaccine made by Russia: Sputnik V.

(With ANI inputs)