As India launched the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination drive, several UN agencies are working closely with authorities for the massive vaccination programme, a spokesperson for the UN chief has said. In India, the UN team led by Resident Coordinator Renata Dessallien is supporting the government and UN partners in the massive COVID-19 vaccination programme, said Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
”UN agencies are working closely with authorities to prepare and launch what is currently the world’s largest vaccination drive,” he told reporters at the daily press briefing, adding that as of Tuesday, the Indian government has vaccinated nearly half a million people. India on January 16 rolled out the massive coronavirus vaccination drive under which two domestically manufactured vaccines — Covishield and Covaxin –are being administered to frontline health workers across the country.
So far a total of 4,54,049 vaccinations have been done, according to data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. There have been about 580 cases of adverse effects following the vaccinations so far and two people have died. The government has said the deaths are not related to the vaccine. Mr Dujarric said UN teams have monitored more than 4,000 vaccination sessions so far and have helped to train more than 300,000 vaccinators and healthcare workers.
UN agencies have helped train hundreds of crisis management centre workers each month to help thousands of survivors of gender-based violence. “We also trained 47,000 nurses and others to combat violence against women, girls and others,” said Dujarric. India has more than 10.5 million Covid-19 infections, more than 24 million cases and more than 400,000 deaths, the second-highest infection in the world after the worst-affected United States. is. The virus has killed more than 150,000 people in India.
