As fresh COVID-19 cases pour in, Indian capital face challenges with below-expectation vaccination coverage

NEW DELHI, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Despite the Indian government's ongoing campaign to accelerate the pace and coverage of COVID-19 vaccination across states, data shows only one district in the Indian capital has completed over 90 percent of the two-dose vaccination coverage.

According to the data available with the government's CoWIN portal, Indian government's COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network, of the 11 districts in the capital, only the New Delhi district has consistently been the best performer when it comes to COVID-19 vaccination, with 94.2 percent second dose coverage.

Three districts - Southwest, East and West have been able to achieve 89.8 percent, 88.5 percent and 88.4 percent respectively. Four districts - South, Shahdara, North and Northwest have achieved 83.3 percent, 81.7 percent, 81.1 percent and 80.2 percent respectively.

Two districts - Northeast and Central have recorded vaccination coverage of 79.9 percent and 77.1 percent. One district - Southeast has achieved coverage of 70.5 percent.

According to officials, the New Delhi district has one of the best coverage of the precaution dose (third dose) among frontline workers as well. The coverage of the third dose among frontline workers has been poor in other districts.

To fight the pandemic, the Indian government has been trying to increase the vaccination coverage of its population.

So far 66.7 percent of India's eligible population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 which means receiving the required two doses of vaccine.

Meanwhile, the country reported 13,615 fresh cases of COVID-19 during the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 43,652,944, the data released by the country's federal health ministry showed on Tuesday.

With this, the number of active cases in the country rose to 131,043.

According to the ministry, 20 deaths related to COVID-19 have been recorded during the past 24 hours, pushing the overall death toll to 525,474 in the country.

Health officials are worried about the detection of super contagious omicron mutant (BA.2.75) that has begun to gain ground in India. There are fears it may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infections.