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3:37 a.m. ET, April 29, 2021
More than 13 million people in India applied for Covid-19 vaccines after minimum age lowered to 18
From CNN s Manveena Suri in New Delhi
Syringes filled with COVISHIELD vaccine for COVID-19 lie on ice box at a primary health center in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, on April 28. Dar Yasin/AP
About 13.3 million people applied for Covid-19 vaccinations in India on Thursday, the first day the vaccine was made available to everyone between the ages 18 and 44, according to the government s dedicated vaccination website, CoWIN.
India is administering two vaccines domestically: the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot, also known as Covishield, and its homegrown Covaxin, developed jointly by Bharat Biotech and the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
Vaccine rollout continues
As of yesterday evening local time, 154,854,096 vaccine doses had been administered.
A total of 27,889,889 people had received their second doses equal to 2.1 per cent of India s population of 1.3 billion people, according to a health ministry news release.
This figure is significantly lower than the United States, where 29.8 per cent of the population are fully immunised.
India launched its vaccination drive on January 16, and expanded the program to everyone above the age of 18 from today.
However, a number of states are warning they have no shots to give.
A health worker wearing protective gear collects a nasal swab sample of an election counting agent to test for the COVID-19 at Siliguri college counting centre in Siliguri.(Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty Images)