India has completed administering one dose of Covid vaccine to at least 50 per cent of its adult population, as 610 million beneficiaries have been inoculated so far under the nationwide vaccination drive that began earlier this year. Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said that it was an "unprecedented milestone" as he shared the information on Twitter.

"This implies that a significant number of people in India have protection against the virus," Mandaviya said in another tweet. 

The cumulative number of vaccination coverage crossed 610 million landmark milestone on Thursday, with nearly 8 million vaccine doses (79,48,439) being administered in the last 24 hours, NDTV said. But only about 15% of the eligible population has been fully vaccinated with double doses so far.  

India is only behind China in terms of the number of doses administered so far, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University in the US.

India is aiming to fully vaccinate 60% of the population by December 2021 in order to prevent a third wave of the pandemic. An estimated10.9 million doses will have to be administered per day across the country to achieve the December target.
 
The country's overall caseload now stands at 30 million, while total fatalities are at 436,000 in a country of 1.3 billion people, according to the health ministry. However, the unofficial figures are said to be much higher as many states have been accused of severely undercounting cases and fatalities.