Healthcare workers get first jabs as India's vaccination drive begins

A medic administers the first dose of Covishield vaccine to a frontline worker at Victoria Hospital in Jabalpur, after the virtual launch of COVID-19 vaccination drive by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday. Pic/PTI

Healthcare workers at the frontline of India's COVID-19 battle got their first jabs on Saturday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi launching the world's largest vaccination drive against the pandemic, showing the light at the end of a 10-month tunnel that upended millions of lives and livelihoods.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi

More than one crore cases and 1.5 lakh fatalities later, India took its first steps out of the pandemic with shots of the Covishield and Covaxin vaccines being administered at medical centres across the country to a collective sigh of relief that this could finally be the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 trauma.

Along with healthcare workers, others such as AIIMS director Randeep Guleria, NITI Aayog member VK Paul, who is also head of an empowered group on medical equipment and management plan to tackle the outbreak, took the vaccine shots.

Addressing the nation ahead of the launch, the PM reminded people that two doses of the vaccine are very important and asked them to continue with masks and social distancing even after receiving the jabs.

Modi spoke of the disruption the pandemic had caused to people's lives, isolating victims of the Coronavirus and denying the dead traditional last rites. The PM also referred to sacrifices made by healthcare and frontline workers, hundreds of whom lost their lives to the viral infection. "Our vaccination programme is driven by humanitarian concerns, those exposed to maximum risk will get priority," the PM said.

MP gets a vaccine
BJP Lok Sabha MP from Gautam Buddha Nagar and former Union minister Mahesh Sharma on Saturday became the first public representative to get the COVID-19 vaccine shot as a medical practitioner at Kailash Hospital.

Sharma is also the owner of the Kailash group of hospitals. "I am not getting the vaccine as an MP or public representative, but as a doctor. I am in this profession for the last 35 years and we should hail the work of our scientists who prepared the two vaccines," Sharma said.

‘I will also get vaccinated'
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Saturday said he too will get a vaccine shot against the Coronavirus.

Launching the COVID-19 vaccination drive in the state at Government Rajaji Hospital in Madurai, Palaniswami told reporters that he too will get vaccinated against Coronavirus and added that the state had received 556,500 doses of vaccines - 536,500 doses of Covishield and 20,000 doses of Covaxin.

Palaniswami said 28 days after the first shot, a second vaccine dose will be administered and one has to be very careful for the next 42 days after which immunity against coronavirus will develop.

When pointed out some states not using Covaxin, Palaniswami said the permission to the vaccine was given by the central government after detailed studies.

Palaniswami said people may have some initial apprehension about the vaccine, but when the doctors themselves come forward to take the shot people's views would undergo a change.

20 ITBP personnel get jabs
At least 20 healthcare personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) posted in Ladakh were among the first recipients of the vaccine on Saturday.

This includes two women officers, chief medical officer Katyayni Sharma Pande and medical officer Dr Skalzang Angmo, force spokesperson Vivek Kumar Pandey said in Delhi.

The border guarding force has a large presence in the Ladakh region by virtue of its deployment to guard the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China.

First time lucky?
The first person in the country to get the vaccine shot was sanitation worker Manish Kumar. He was vaccinated at AIIMS in New Delhi in the presence of Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan. After an hour of taking the jab, Kumar spoke to the media and said that he did not feel any side effects or pain and is feeling perfectly energetic to perform his daily chores.

All you need to know about India's two COVID-19 vaccines
>> Covaxin and Covishield are selected by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCG I). So far, the government has procured 1.1 crore Covishield and 55 lakh Covaxin vaccines at a cost of Rs 200 and Rs 206 per dose, respectively.

>> Covaxin, developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, is the country's first indigenous vaccine against the virus.

>> Covaxin uses an inactivated form of the Coronavirus. It destroys the ability of the virus to multiply in the human body and increases immunity system to fight the virus.

>> On the other hand, the Oxford University and AstraZeneca have developed Covishield.

>> Covishield is made by taking a common cold virus called an adenovirus from chimpanzees and deleting about 20 per cent of the virus's instructions. It also follows the genetic instructions programmed into it by its developers to successfully provoke a strong immune response.