NEW DELHI: India has missed the target of giving its entire adult population of 940 million two vaccinations by the end of 2021.

The target was first announced by Prakash Javadekar in May, who was a minister in the federal government at the time. "Vaccination in India will be completed by December 2021," he said.

As of 30 December, 64% of India's adult population is fully vaccinated and around 90% has received the first dose. Experts said achieving the target of full vaccination coverage would take a long time.

Weekly vaccinations have slowed since the first week of December, according to India's vaccine dashboard - CoWin.

Since mid-October, more second doses have been given than first doses.

The daily vaccination numbers have been fluctuating with the highest number achieved on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday on 17 September. Over 20 million jabs were administered on the day but the country has not been able to achieve the same number since.

While the monthly average for September was around 8.1 million doses a day, it fell to 5.4 million in October and 5.7 million in November.

Some experts say if the September momentum had been kept up, India could have been closer to the target, but that demand would eventually have fallen.

The vaccination drive, which started in January, faced challenges such as supply constraints due to raw materials shortages, logistical issues, and vaccine hesitancy.

By the second half of the year, the supply constraints had been addressed. The challenge is now the demand rather than the supply.

A month after the programme was announced, the first dose coverage had only increased by 6% and the second dose coverage by 12%.

Modi has now asked states to ramp up vaccinations in districts with low uptake amid Omicron fears.

Over the past few months, the 100% target has not been mentioned in any of the press conferences by the health ministry.

India is currently administering two locally-manufactured vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, and the Russian vaccine Sputnik.

India's largest vaccine maker, Serum Institute of India (SII), was manufacturing 250 million doses of Covishield a month before the company announced production cuts in December due to a lack of orders. It now produces between 125 and 150 million doses a month.

Bharat Biotech, the manufacturer of Covaxin, makes 50 to 60 million doses a month.

India's health minister, Mansukh Mandaviya, recently said in parliament that states had a stock of 170 million vaccines as of 20 December.

He added that the vaccine manufacturing capacity would rise from the current 310 million doses a month to 450 million doses a month in the next two months.

The government has announced jabs for children aged 15 to 18 years and a booster programme for health workers and those above 60 years with other health conditions starting this month.

The health ministry has said that around 6.2 million doses have been wasted since the start of the vaccine programme, which is considerably below the number that the World Health Organisation (WHO) would expect to be wasted.

There are other Indian-made vaccines expected to be used against Covid.