Indians are praying hard a third Covid wave isn't triggered any time soon (File)
Having seen off a deadly second wave of coronavirus infections, India is now praying that a third wave doesn't emerge to rampage through the country.
The focus is now shifting to vaccinating India's vast population, and the government, health professionals and vaccine manufacturers are working hard to ensure doses are administered to as many people as quickly as possible to help fight off the virus.
However, the rate of vaccination is a subject of concern, with experts worried that it falls considerably short of the required pace to avoid another, potentially worse, outbreak.
Estimates say India must inoculate at least 60 per cent of its 1.3 billion population with both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by December 2021 to guard against a third wave.
To achieve this threshold, India must administer vaccines to 9.2 million people every day.
However, over the past seven days the average per day vaccination rate was 3.8 million.
The average daily shortfall for the past seven days, therefore, is 5.3 million doses per day.
On Wednesday, according to data from the CoWIN platform, 3.4 million doses were administered - nearly half of the daily target of doses.
And for each day that India fails to reach its daily vaccination target, the required rate continues to increase.
This morning India reported 42,015 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours.
Overall, active cases have fallen to below 4.07 lakh.
Over 41 crore doses have been administered so far.
The government has said it plans to vaccinate all eligible Indians - around 108 crore - by end-2021, even as concerns remain over providing an adequate supply of doses.
So far four vaccines - Covishield, Covaxin, Russia's Sputnik V and Moderna - have been cleared for use, although only Covaxin and Covishield are widely available.