India celebrates 1B vaccine doses, hopes to speed 2nd shots

By KRUTIKA PATHI
Associated Press

NEW DELHI (AP) — India is celebrating giving its billionth COVID-19 vaccine dose. It’s a hopeful milestone for the South Asian country where the delta variant fueled a crushing surge and missteps initially held back its inoculation campaign. The country crossed the 1 billion mark on Thursday. About half of India’s nearly 1.4 billion people have received at least one dose while around 20% are fully immunized. The success of the campaign has been credited with driving down coronavirus cases since the devastating months at the start of the year. But experts warn that India must speed up the delivery of second shots. For now, the country appears to have enough vaccines to do that — but its supplies will be watched closely since it’s a major supplier of the shots globally.