September 17 was a massive Covid-19 vaccination day for India. The country recorded 2.5 crore (25 million) doses as being delivered in a si...
September 17 was a massive Covid-19 vaccination day for India. The country recorded 2.5 crore (25 million) doses as being delivered in a single day. Politicians from the Bharatiya Janata Party hailed the massive figures, describing it as a gift to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose birthday was that day.
Among the states, Bihar topped the charts. It recorded 33,98,685 vaccinations until the midnight of September 17 – ahead of Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, all states in which the BJP is in power. Bihar is ruled by an alliance government of the Janata Dal (United) and BJP.
On average, 2,000 vaccination sites are functional in the state on any given day, but on September 17, the number went up to 14,483. Over 50,000 healthcare workers were roped in to vaccinate beneficiaries and upload the data online.
But behind the massive success in Bihar, primary health centre officials and data entry operators from several districts claim they “were under tremendous pressure to perform”. While they carried large-scale vaccinations on September 17, a significant chunk of data uploaded on that day was actually of people vaccinated offline over the previous two days, several officials told Scroll.in, on the condition of anonymity.
Offline vaccination describes immunisations delivered at...
