As many as 11,349 citizens, who participated in the clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, have been issued their vaccination certificates, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Monday.

The ministry said in a statement that the Centre decided to issue the certificates to the participants who were administered the vaccines during these trials.

In these trials, some of the participants are given a placebo dose and others are given the drug to conduct a comparative study. Usually, in such trials, it is not revealed which participants have been given the drug or the placebo. This is called blinded clinical trials.

The ministry statement said that the certificates were issued after the trial data was unblinded, allowing the government to figure out who were actually administered the vaccine shots.

The certificates were issued on the basis of information submitted by the Indian Council of Medical Research, which was designated the nodal agency for the collection of vaccination data of such participants, the ministry said in a statement.

The participants can download their vaccination certificates through CoWIN portal, Aarogya Setu, Digilocker or UMANG applications.

Covishield is produced by the Serum Institute of India and Covaxin is manufactured by Bharat Biotech. These two vaccines were rolled out first when the countrywide Covid-19 inoculation drive on January 16.

Besides them, India’s drug regulator has granted emergency use authorisation to Zydus Cadila’s ZyCov-D, Russia-made Sputnik V and shots developed by United States-based Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

So far, India has administered 58,72,94,730 Covid-19 vaccine shots with 13,14,73,766 beneficiaries receiving both doses, data on CoWIN portal showed.

Meanwhile, India on Monday morning recorded 25,072 coronavirus cases, pushing the country’s infection tally to 3,24,49,306 since the pandemic broke out in January last year. With 389 deaths, the toll mounted to 4,34,756.

Monday’s case tally is the lowest count in 160 days, according to the Centre. It is also 19% lower than Sunday’s count of 30,948.

So far, 3,16,80,626 people have recovered from the infection. The number of active cases has dropped to 3,33,924.