No, India Isn't The 'First Country' To Administer 1 Bn COVID Vaccine Doses

China had administered 100 crore (1 billion) doses of COVID-19 vaccine on 19 June .

As India achieved the milestone of administering 100 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses on Thursday, 21 October, many social media users, including leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed that India was the first country in the world to do so.

While it is a big achievement, it is misleading to claim that India is the only country to achieve this feat. China had administered 100 crore (one billion) doses of COVID vaccine on 19 June and till date, as per the data in the public domain, China has administered over two billion doses.

CLAIM

BJP National General Secretary CT Ravi tweeted, "...Today, India will be first country in the World to administer 100 CRORE doses of #COVID19 Vaccine. (sic)"

The claim saw its presence on Facebook and Twitter and the archived posts can be viewed here, here, here and here.

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WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We checked the data available on an online repository of data called 'Our World in Data' and compared the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in India with respect to other countries in the world.

As per the data, China had administered one billion, which is 100 crore, on 19 June and had reached the two billion mark on 26 August.

Meanwhile, India had administered over 60 crore vaccine doses by 26 August.

Further, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, China had administered 2,232,088,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses at the time of writing the article with over one billion people being fully vaccinated.

While India achieved the milestone of administering one billion COVID-19 vaccines on Thursday, 21 October, social media users falsely claimed that it is the first country in the world to do so.

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