Time to tackle COVID-19 vaccine delivery bottlenecks

India needs effective communication strategy to tackle vaccine hesitancy

On June 21, India administered 8.6 million shots of COVID-19 vaccines, the highest daily doses since the start of the drive on January 16. With an officially projected supply of around 210 million doses of COVID-19 in the period from June 21 to July 31, India should be able to administer 5 million shots a day (6 million shots a day, if we exclude holidays) and sustain the tempo for the coming weeks. Yet, this would not be enough to achieve the stated target of jabs for the entire adult population by the end of 2021. To achieve that, India needs to conduct at least 10 million jabs a day, now onwards. Even with the ongoing vaccination drive, there are many ground reports about two challenges, which demand urgent attention and intervention. The first is vaccine inequity. There is low uptake of COVID-19 vaccine among groups such as slum dwellers and urban poor as well as in rural population. Some of these inequities have their origin in supply side aspects, as most vaccination centres are in urban settings, and the need for prior and, for some, mandatory, registration on the digital platform.