No, India Isn’t Only Country to Vaccinate Over 80 Lakh in a Day

While it is true that India administered 86.16 lakh vaccines, but it’s not the first country to do so.  

(Photo: Erum Gour)

On Tuesday, 22 June, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Harsh Vardhan and several other Union ministers celebrated India’s highest single-day vaccination numbers and wrote that it was the “highest ever single-day coverage across the world.”

However, the claim is inaccurate. As per the data released by the Chinese government and media reports, China has stepped up its vaccination drive and has vaccinated nearly two crore people in a single day, on multiple occasions.

CLAIM

Retweeting PM Modi's tweet regarding the ‘”record breaking numbers’” in vaccination, Dr Harsh Vardhan wrote, “86.16 lakh #COVID19Vaccine doses administered on Jun 21! Highest ever single day coverage across the 🌎!”

The archived version of this tweet can be accessed here.

(Photo: Twitter/Screenshot)

Union Textile Minister and Women and Child Development Smriti Irani also tweeted the number in celebration and called it the highest-ever single day vaccinations in the world, so did PIB's Kerala handle.

Journalists such as Rohan Dua and Rajasekar also made the same claim, as seen here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We looked up the numbers on ‘Our World In Data’ – an online publication for databases – and looked for the number of vaccines administered in various countries in a single day. We found that China has consistently been vaccinating around one crore people per day, since 12 May 2021.

And the number has gone up to two crore and a little beyond on multiple days. For instance, on 26 May, it went up to 20.1 million (about two crore).

We also found media reports from Nature and The Wall Street Journal, that discussed China’s vaccination drive and how the country is administering nearly 20 million (or two crore) doses of the vaccine in a day.

Another report by The South China Morning Post, published on 20 June, mentioned that China had administered its billionth dose (100 crore) over the weekend. And the country has been stepping up the vaccination drive by administering nearly two crore doses, on multiple days.

Clearly, the claim that India is the first country to administer over 86 lakh doses is inaccurate.

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