SHOT IN THE ARM

India begins its nationwide vaccination drive against COVID-19; PM Modi launches mega exercise, asks people not to fall for propaganda, rumours

NEW DELHI: Thousands of healthcare and sanitary workers at the frontline of India’s COVID-19 battle got their first jabs on Saturday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi rolled out 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.

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.

Over 1.90 lakh beneficiaries were inoculated with COVID-19 jabs at 3,352 session sites across the country on Saturday and no case of postinoculation hospitalisation has been reported so far, the government said on the first day of India’s massive vaccination drive against the virus.

Sanitation worker Manish Kumar became the first recipient of the vaccination drive at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the Health ministry said.

“I had good sleep last night, came here (hospital) in the morning and talked to the other staff who were to get the shot,” the 34-year-old who got a shot of the indigenously developed Covaxin said.