India begins COVID-19 vaccination drive
NEW DELHI: India on Saturday started inoculating health workers in what is expected to be the world’s biggest coronavirus vaccination programme.
A sanitation worker at a government hospital in Delhi became the first person to receive a shot in the country of 1.3 billion people, shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the year-long campaign with a nationally televised speech.
India plans to vaccinate 300 million people — nearly the size of the entire population of the United States — by the end of July.
“India is today launching the world’s biggest vaccination programme. Never before has this type of vaccination and such a large-scale vaccination campaign been run in history... It shows the world our capability’’, Modi said in his address.
“These vaccines will help us decisively defeat COVID-19’’, Modi said, paying tribute to India’s front-line workers and scientists.
An estimated 30 million doctors, nurses and other frontline workers will be the first to get the vaccination, followed by 270 million people aged over 50 or
These vaccines will help us decisively defeat COVID-19
NARENDRA MODI Prime Minister
deemed high-risk.
India’s drug regulator has given emergency authorisation to two vaccines: Covishield, developed by Britain’s Oxford University and pharmaceutical firm Astrazeneca, and Covaxin, from Indian company Bharat Biotech.
At over 10.5 million infections, India has recorded the secondhighest number of COVID-19 infections in the world, after the US. India’s coronavirus death toll stands at 151,918.
Some 300,000 health workers were to receive the shots on the first day of the vaccination drive, which federal Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said was “probably the beginning of the end” of
COVID-19.
The vaccination drive began at 3,006 sites; mostly staterun healthcare centres as well as government schools and municipal office being converted to temporary vaccination centres, with each site inoculating 100 people, government officials said. This number will be ramped up to over 5,000 sites as the programme progresses.
“There is relief as well as excitement. We are very lucky to get thevaccine, being part of the first line of defence against the virus’’, Anubhav Sharma, a doctor at Delhi’s Lok Nayak Hospital, who received the jab, told broadcaster NDTV. “The past few months have been full of worry. We will be more confident in dealing with patients and provide even better care now.”
Modi urged Indians not to believe “propaganda and rumours” about the safety of vaccines amid controversy over the locally produced Covaxin, which has been cleared for emergency use while still in clinical trials.