Also Read | Revenge of the lambs at the GabbatoirThe country had given around 1.5 million people their first shots as of Saturday, a week after launching the effort.
That is an average of about 200,000 a day. It would need to administer 1.3 million a day to reach its August target.India has more government vaccination-drive experience and manufacturing capacity than most countries, and it had cautioned that the campaign would start slowly.
But in the first week, more than 40% fewer people showed up for shots than had been anticipated.Government officials say they are still working out the bottlenecks, but the low early turnout among health-care workers—the first to be offered the vaccine—suggests a much longer timeline than expected to.