Beijing: China crossed a major milestone this weekend as the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the world’s most populous country crossed the one-billion doses mark.
That is a remarkable achievement considering the fact that around 2.59 billion doses have been administered globally across 180 countries so far, as per data collected by Bloomberg.
China’s population is 1.43 billion.
India, by comparison, is way behind. The country with the second-highest population in the world (1.38 billion) has thus far administered 276 million doses.
Though the Indian government is taking all steps to ramp up vaccine supply and speed up the pace of inoculation, the target of completing vaccination of the entire eligible population by the end of 2021 seems a bit far-fetched at this juncture.
China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Sunday that the last 100 million doses have been administered in just five days. It didn’t, however, specify how many people had been fully vaccinated.
“China accelerated its pace of free COVID-19 vaccinations for the whole nation since late March. It took China 25 days to climb from 100 million doses to 200 million doses, 16 days to increase from 200 million to 300 million, and six days from 800 million to 900 million,” Xinhua news agency reported.
A total of 21 Covid-19 vaccines entered clinical trials in China since last year.
“So far, four vaccines have been granted conditional marketing approval and three have been authorised for emergency use within the country,” the Xinhua report stated.
No non-Chinese vaccine has been approved by the country’s regulators so far.
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