Karnataka topped the special Covid vaccination drive in the country by administering a whopping 26.92 lakh doses till 9 p.m. on Friday, K. Sudhakar, Minister for Health and Family Welfare and Medical Education stated.

The southern state was ahead of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh which achieved over 26.62 lakh doses and 24.86 lakh doses respectively, he said.

“I would like to thank all the health workers and other staff who have been involved in this historic vaccination drive,” he added.

“It is a phenomenal effort by Karnataka to administer more doses today than Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which have several times more population,” he said. “It is really apt that this effort coincides with the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has led the war on Covid from the front,” he said.

Karnataka also crossed an overall 5 crore Covid doses administered so far.

Meanwhile, the state on Friday also crossed the “milestone” of administering over 50 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to date.

Data from Cowin shows the Karnataka government appears to have continued its practice to hoard Covid-19 vaccines so as to show a higher number of inoculations on Friday. The state government denied hoarding of vaccines.

The state government had set a target to administer 3 million doses on Friday to celebrate the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The top districts were the BBMP area (3.98 lakh doses), Belagavi (2.39 lakh doses), Dakshina Kannada (1.33 lakh doses), Ballari (1.33 lakh doses), Tumkuru (1.24 lakh doses), and Mandya (1.15 lakh doses). Bengaluru Urban, Shivamogga, Dharwad, Ramanagara, Hassana, Davanagere, Chikamagaluru, and Haveri districts achieved more than 100% of the day’s target.

With Friday’s performance, total doses administered in the state in September have gone up to 87 lakhs. “We are very confident of crossing the target of 1.5 crores that we have set ourselves for September,” said the minister.

The vaccination drive was conducted in over 12,000 Covid vaccination centers across the state. With this, Karnataka has administered a total of 5.12 crore doses till 9 p.m. on September 17.

“We are confident of vaccinating the entire adult population in the state by the end of November. India today administered a whopping 2.25 crore dose today till 9 pm. The total doses administered in India till September 17 has crossed 79 crores,” he said.