New Delhi, January 28 (IANS): While India has already given Covid-19 vaccine doses to over 20 lakh people as the first phase of the drive continues, a new study has said that the vaccination programme against the pandemic will stretch to late 2022.

Similar will be the scenario for most middle-income countries, including China, said the report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the research division of the Economist Group.

While vaccination programme currently underway have raised hope of beating the pandemic, unequal distribution of vaccines, along with production issues, has become a major pain point.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday reiterated his call for equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines as the global caseload has surpassed the 100 million mark, another grim milestone as the pandemic rages on.

"Most developing countries will not have widespread access to the shots before 2023 at the earliest," Agathe Demarais, Director of the Economist Intelligence Unit, said in its study on Wednesday.

"Some of these countries - particularly poorer ones with a young demographic profile - may well lose the motivation to distribute vaccines, especially if the disease has spread widely or if the associated costs prove too high."

The study showed that more than 85 poor countries will not have widespread access to Covid-19 vaccines before 2023.

The research noted that Russia and China are trying to bolster their global status through vaccine diplomacy.

While the UK, the US and most countries in the European Union are likely to achieve the goal of vaccinating their priority groups by end of March, other rich countries are expected to achieve the same by end of June.

Therefore, the global economic recovery is expected to gain more momentum from the middle of this year.

However, vaccination programme for most of the population will continue until mid-2022, said the study.

India ranks 86 out of 98 nations in Covid handling: Report

With more than 11 million Covid-19 cases, India has ranked 86 in a performance index of 98 countries for their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, a report said on Thursday.

According to the performance index compiled by the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, neighbouring Sri Lanka was in the 10th position in handling the Covid-19 outbreak.

The performance index showed that New Zealand handled the pandemic more effectively than any other country in the world, while Brazil sits at the bottom of the list.

New Zealand was closely followed by Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand and Cyprus, while the US was the fifth-worst performing country, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Thursday.

In the report, the Lowy Institute revealed that smaller populations, cohesive societies and capable institutions were big factors in successfully dealing with the pandemic.

The study measured a number of key indicators, including confirmed cases, deaths, cases per million people and deaths per million people.

China was not included in the study because all of its testing rates are not publicly available.

With 11,666 new Covid-19 cases getting reported in the last 24 hours on Thursday, India has continued its streak of low single-day cases, even as the overall tally mounted to 1,07,01,193, health officials said.

For the past 21 days, the country has been recording less than 20,000 new infections daily. Also, the death toll remained below the 300-mark for the past 31 days.

On January 19, India had reported 10,064 new cases, the lowest so far this year. Last year, the lowest was recorded on June 3 at 9,633 cases.

The nationwide immunisation drive began on January 16 after the approval of two Covid vaccines -- Covaxin and Covishield -- in the country. As many as 23,55,979 beneficiaries have received the first dose of Covid vaccine in the first phase so far.