As India eyes new milestone, a look at how vaccination campaign has unfolded worldwide

India is set to cross an important milestone of administering a billion vaccine doses by the third week of October. After this, the nation will take a call on the resumption of export of locally-made vaccines against the deadly coronavirus, said Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya. 

As of Thursday, total vaccine doses administered in the country crossed 970 million. 73 per cent of all adults have received at least the first vaccine dose, and 30 per cent having been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, said the health minister.

India is yet to start vaccinations of those under the age of 18. Another vaccine for those in the 12-18 age group, ZyCoV-D was approved on August 20.

In order to mark the occasion, public announcements at airports, railways stations, shipping ports, bus stations and metro rails will be made as India administers a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses.

As the biggest vaccination campaign in history is underway worldwide, more than 6.66 billion doses have been administered across 184 countries.

As of now, only China has administered more vaccine doses than India as of October 10. China had administered about 2.22 billion doses of the coronavirus vaccine. 

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The vaccines developed by the Chinese pharmaceutical companies, Sinovac and Sinopharm, have received approvals and advance purchase agreements in countries like Brazil, Turkey, and Indonesia.

In the US, 407 million doses have been given so far. In the last week, an average of 675,562 doses per day were administered.

Recently, Pfizer had asked the US government to approve the use of its COVID-19 vaccine in children aged 5 to 11 years old, and if regulators agree, inoculation may start within weeks.

Data by Bloomberg reveals that globally, the latest vaccination rate is 26,193,513 doses per day on average. At this pace, it will take another 6 months to cover 75 per cent of the population.

Israel was the first to achieve a successful vaccination rate. The country led the world in early vaccinations, and by February more than 84 per cent of people aged 70 and older had received two doses. 

Since the start of the global vaccination campaign, countries have been racing to gain access to the vaccine and then administering the dose to their citizens. The European Union has administered a total of 580,084,270 doses, followed by the US at 406,570,875 doses, reveals a Bloomberg report.

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After this, comes Brazil (256,425,302 doses), Japan (178,255,509 doses), Indonesia (170,235,796 doses), Turkey (113,862,236 doses), Mexico (113,862,236 doses), and Germany (109,892,041 doses). 

New Zealand, also recently, set a new record as it managed to vaccinate 2.5 per cent of its population within a single day. The jump in vaccination drive comes at a time when the country is struggling to recover from a recent surge of coronavirus cases.

The deadly coronavirus pandemic has reversed decades of progress, however, with the growing vaccination rate, there is still a chance to battle the COVID-19 virus and revive the global economy.