Over 17,000 people were vaccinated across six states on Day 2 of the nationwide coronavirus drive, the Health Ministry said Sunday evening, adding that this takes the total number of people vaccinated so far to around 2.24 lakh.
On Saturday (Day 1) 1.91 lakh people were administered the shots with over 3,000 sites active across India. The Health Ministry said the drop in the number of states carrying out vaccination today was part of a "usual strategy" to avoid clashes with immunisation schedules for other illnesses.
At today's briefing the ministry also said that only 447 AEFIs had been recorded over the two days of vaccination, of which only three patients had to be hospitalised. Two of these three have been discharged after treatment (from Delhi's AIIMS and Railway Hospital), while the third was under observation at the AIIMS in Rishikesh.
The WHO defines AEFIs as any untoward medical occurrence which follows immunisation and does not necessarily have a causal relationship with the usage of the vaccine.
"The usual strategy is to avoid days on which there is a holiday or there is routine immunisation for other diseases. Most states are doing it on four days but smaller states like Goa are dping it on two days of the week because they have lesser numbers," Manohar Agnani, the Joint Secretary of the Health Ministry, said.
India added 15,144 coronavirus cases on Sunday, placing its overall number at 1.05 crore cases, the Health Ministry's data showed. The number of fresh infections reported on Sunday were marginally lower than on Saturday. In this period, India reported 181 deaths linked to the virus, taking the total number of fatalities to 1,52,274.