India has the highest number of under-vaccinated or unvaccinated children worldwide at 3.5 million, an increase of 1.4 million from 2019, amid the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the UNICEF said.
It also noted that over 3 million of “zero-dose children” in 2020 lived in India.
At nearly 4.4 million, South Asia recorded the highest number of children having failed to receive any routine vaccination in the past ten years, in 2020.
Globally, the UNICEF said the data shows that just 10 countries account for 62 per cent of all under- or unvaccinated children globally.
India – particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic – had the highest number of unprotected children worldwide at 3.5 million, an increase of 1.4 million compared with 2019, when the number of unprotected children was 2.1 million,” the children’s body said.
Unprotected children are those who are unvaccinated (no vaccine) or under-vaccinated (incomplete vaccination), that is, any child who has not received any or few doses of their due vaccination.
Discussion about this post