Major Covid vaccine drive to mark Indian PM Narendra Modi's birthday

Indian ruling party BJP is aspiring to help create a record by helping achieve the nation's maximum number of COVID-19 vaccine inoculations on September 17. The vaccine drive is to mark the birthday of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

BJP is prepping its health volunteers to achieve this milestone to ensure that the maximum number of people get their COVID-19 vaccines on the day.

India has administered more than one crore COVID-19 vaccines in a day on earlier occasions. The target that BJP is aspiring is to get more than 1.5 crore vaccines administered on the day, the BJP sources informed.

Senior leaders in the BJP said that the party would try to see that the day will be recorded in the nation's history as the one that witnessed a record number of Covid vaccines administered.

They also said this would be a befitting reply to those who tried to create vaccine hesitancy in people for purely political reasons and thus endangered people's lives.

Notably, India has also surpassed the average daily COVID-19 vaccination of the 18 major countries in the world, the Indian Health Ministry informed on September 17.

According to the Ministry, the 18 major countries globally have administered 81,70,000 (8.17 million) doses, while India has administered 85,40,000 (8.54 million) doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Major countries include Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Russia.

The ministry said that the data is from September 1 to September 13.

Meanwhile, India reported 30,570 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the tally of cases in the country to 3,33,47,325, informed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on September 15.

The country has been reporting less than 50,000 cases of COVID infection for 81 consecutive days now, the ministry said.

(ANI)