India's vaccination campaign to fight the COVID-19 pandemic has now culminated into a big target as the Central government aims to vaccinate the country's adult population by the end of this year. The country has unveiled the vaccination drive in January this year and India is now driving through the third phase of the vaccination drive concentrating to inoculate doses to the age group of 18-44, which contributes about 60% in India's total population.

On Wednesday, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said that India will have procured 267 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses by the end of this year and the country will be in the position to inoculate at least all of its adult population. The health minister said that the country will have 51 crores COVID-19 vaccine doses by July and 216 crores more between August and December. 

He had urged the states to prioritize vaccinating healthcare and frontline workers as they fall under vulnerable categories. Harsh Vardhan had participated in the virtual interaction with the health ministers and secretaries of West Bengal and the northeastern states on Wednesday during which he spoke about India's target of vaccinating the adult population by this year. 

During the interaction, Harsh Vardhan has said that the smaller states are showing a surge in terms of the number of infections and he appealed to the health secretaries to be more cautious and expedite the measures to contain the spread. The health minister has highlighted the efforts taken by the government in combating the pandemic. He said that India had just one Covid testing lab initially and now the country has over 2000 labs across its territory.

During the interaction, Vardhan had outlined that the country has increased the capacity to test 25 lakh people daily and he pressed the need to follow the government guidelines and containment measures to arrest the spread of the viral infection. He further highlighted that India has achieved another milestone by crossing 18 crore doses recently. He said that more than one crore doses of vaccines are stocked up with the state governments. 

Minister of State for Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey said that testing should be paced up and asserted that the Central government has been assisting the states on medicines for Black Fungus and oxygen and pressed that the country must maintain and follow COVID-19 protocol to win the war against the pandemic. 

According to the Union Health Ministry, India has reported 2,76,070 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours till 8 am on Thursday. The country has reported 3,69,077 discharges and 3,874 deaths during the same period. Overall, India has recorded 2,57,72,400 cases so far of which 31,29,878 are active, 2,23,55,440 have been discharged, and 2,87,122 had succumbed to the viral infection. India's total vaccination count stands at 18,70,09,792 doses so far in the last 24 hours.