Delhi government seeks 45 lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses for July

New Delhi: The Delhi government has asked the Centre for 45 lakh Covid vaccine doses in July to keep up current vaccination rate of 1.5 lakh jabs daily, Aam Aadmi Party MLA Atishi on Sunday.

She said that Delhi’s vaccination drove has been sped up and around 1.5 lakh doses are being administered per day for the last three days. Thus, Delhi would need at least 45 lakh vaccine doses in July.

“Delhi government has written a letter to the Central government, requesting it provide adequate vaccines for July. The increase in vaccine supply would help us in vaccinating about 70 per cent of our population and achieving herd immunity in Delhi,” she said, while presenting the daily vaccine bulletin of the Delhi government.

A total of 2,07,559 Covid shots were administered in Delhi on Saturday, out of which more than 1.5 lakh were administered to the people in the 18-44 age group.

In the national capital, so far, 73,29,652 people have been administered vaccine doses, out of which more than 56 lakh people have got the first and more than 17 lakh people have received both the doses.

Delhi has around 7.06 lakh vaccine doses are available, out of which 5.40 lakh are of Covishield and 1.6 lakh of Covaxin.

“We were able to vaccinate more than 50 per cent of the 45 and above age group population a long time ago, but the vaccination of the youth started at a later stage and the vaccine availability was also an issue. Therefore, the vaccination speed of the youth was increasing at a slower pace. But with the availability of the vaccine stock and the increase in the vaccination speed, we have been able to vaccinate 25 per cent of the youth population in Delhi,” Atishi added.