No real surge in covid-19 vaccinations during Tika Utsav, show statistics

The four-day Tika Utsav (vaccination festival), a clarion call given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speed up immunisation coverage against covid-19, failed to record a real “surge”.

The total vaccination figures during the Tika Utsav saw a jump of 1.28 crores (1,28,98,314) vaccine doses being administered to people of the eligible groups across the country, but the vaccination statistics starting 1st April show that the event missed the real “peak”.

The government covered the widest population of the country i.e. all persons aged above 45 years of age from 1 April. At least 29,33,418 vaccination doses were given on 11th April, another 40,04,521 were administered the next day. The corresponding figure for 13th and 14th April stands at 26,46,528 and 33,13,848.

“The average vaccinations per day is 35 lakhs with a maximum possible vaccination of 54 lakhs per day, crossing which would indicate a real peak. Also, vaccinations below 16 lakhs would indicate a real low,” said Professor Balaji S. Reddie, Assistant Professor, statistics, Sri Balaji University, Pune.

“The Tika Utsav numbers were no special indicators suggesting that there was no real surge of vaccinations during these four days,” he said.

The government claimed that between 11th and 14th April as ‘Tika Utsav’ (vaccination festival) saw many Workplace Vaccination Centres (CVCs) operational across the private and public workplaces.

On an average 45,000 CVCs used to be functional on any given day. On Day-1, Day-2, Day-3 and Day-4 of the four day “Tika Utsav”, 63,800, 71,000, 67,893 and 69,974 CVCs were active, respectively.

Additionally, on an average, Sunday use to witness lower levels of vaccination numbers (about 16 lakh). But, on the first day of Tika Utsav, which was a Sunday, more than 27 lakh vaccine doses were administered till 8 pm that day, the government claimed. Three States have administered more than 1 crore vaccinations cumulatively. These are Maharashtra (1,11,19,018), Rajasthan (1,02,15,471) and Uttar Pradesh (1,00,17,650).

The total vaccinations across the country have crossed the 11.70 crore mark on Thursday with more than 26.02 lakh vaccine doses administered till 8 PM.