'Herd Immunity' in India by post-October: SBI Ecowrap Report

SBI Ecowrap report India would be able to achieve "herd immunity" only by end of October, and the country needs to drastically scale up the vaccination drive.

The report said that till date, the country has given 16.5 crore doses of vaccine with 13.10 crore having taken just the first jab and the remaining 3.15 crore have taken both the jabs.

"Given this trend, India can only be able to vaccinate 15 per cent of her population by October 2021 (which is required for herd immunity, given the other countries' trends), but only if we are able to vaccinate around 55 lakh persons daily in Sep-Oct," said the report, authored by Dr. Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Group Chief Economic Advisor to SBI.

He further stated that, since vaccination is the only driver to fight the pandemic and contain the COVID surge, and scientists analyzed that the estimated ideal share of each state in total vaccine based on distribution parameters including population above 18 above.

"However, we also need to understand that there will be always a gap in ex-ante and ex-post vaccine distribution given the spread of Covid-19 has been almost difficult to predict," the report said.