Vaccine hesitancy greatest threat in overcoming pandemic: Adar Poonawalla

The chief of Serum Institue of India (SII), Adar Poonawalla, in a tweet, said that vaccine hesitancy was the ‘greatest threat’ in defeating the COVID-19 pandemic. SII manufactures COVID-19 vaccine Covishield. He also urged all those who are eligible to get vaccinated against the virus as soon as possible.

He added that there are over 200 million doses of Covishield vaccine available with the states.

“The vaccine industry has worked tirelessly to provide enough stocks for the nation. Today there are over 200 million doses available with states. I urge all adults to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Vaccine hesitancy is now the greatest threat in overcoming this pandemic,” he said in a tweet.

In India, the two widely used vaccines are AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech‘s Covaxin.

Despite the vaccine inflow, only around 40% of India’s adult population has taken the double douse. However, many are there who skipped the second dose amid falling numbers in infections. According to CoWIN dashboard, more than 38 crore of the country’s around 93 crore adults have been administered both doses of vaccine.

Earlier this month, the Centre launched its door-to-door vaccination campaign – ‘Har Ghar Dastak’ – in order to urge people to get the double dose against the deadly virus.

The cumulative doses administered in the country so far under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive has exceeded 113.68 crore.

India’s COVID tally climbed up to 34,466,598 on Wednesday with 10,197 new cases, while the active cases have declined to 128,555, the lowest in 527 days, according to the Union Health Ministry’s data.

India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20 lakh-mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.

India had crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crore on June 23.