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India's COVID Vaccinations Hit 2 Billion, New Cases at Four-Month High


A health worker administers Covishield vaccine for COVID-19 at a vaccination center in Hyderabad, India, July 15, 2022.
A health worker administers Covishield vaccine for COVID-19 at a vaccination center in Hyderabad, India, July 15, 2022.

The Indian government's COVID-19 vaccinations hit 2 billion on Sunday, with booster doses underway for all adults, as daily infections hit four-month high, official data showed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi extolled the vaccination milestone, celebrating the world's largest and longest-running inoculation campaign, which began last year.

"India creates history again!" Modi said in a tweet. The prime minister has faced allegations from the opposition of mishandling the pandemic that experts claim killed millions. The government rejects the claims.

Health ministry data shows the COVID death toll at 525,709, with 49 deaths recorded overnight.

New cases rose 20,528 over the past 24 hours, the highest since Feb. 20, according to data compiled by Reuters.

The country of 1.35 billion people has lifted most COVID-related restrictions, and international travel has recovered robustly.

Some 80% of the inoculations have been the AstraZeneca AZN.L vaccine made domestically, called Covishield. Others include domestically developed Covaxin and Corbevax, and Russia's Sputnik V.

The federal government has been accelerating its booster campaign to avert the spread of infections, edging higher in the eastern states of Assam, West Bengal and Karnataka in the south.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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