Manish Kumar, a sanitation worker in Delhi, became the first person to receive the Covid-19 vaccine in India after the vaccination drive was flagged off on Saturday. Manish Kumar was given the injection at AIIMS in Delhi while Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan was also present.

Healthcare worker Dhawal Dwivedi was the second person to be inoculated, followed by AIIMS Director Dr. Randeep Guleria and NITI Aayog’s senior member, Dr. VK Paul. Mr. Kumar has been working at AIIMS for eight years. He said that the last few months have been difficult because of the coronavirus pandemic but he reported to work every day.

“Several of my family members, including my mother, are also part of the AIIMS nursing and sanitation staff,” he said. Narrating his experience after getting the vaccine, Manish said that everyone should get inoculated. He added, “I had a good experience. People need not be worried about the vaccine’s side effects.”

The Covid19 pandemic has become more complicated after the discovery of new mutants like in the UK, South Africa & Nigeria. The world’s biggest vaccination drive is aimed at stopping the further spread of the pandemic which so far has killed 1,52,093 people in the country and has ravaged the already shrunk economy. “Such a vaccination drive at such a massive scale was never conducted in history. There are over 100 countries having less than 3 crore population & India is administering vaccination to 3 crore people in first phase only. In second phase, we have to take this number to 30 crores”, PM said. It was also asserted in the directive that there would be two doses with a gap of almost one month between the first and second doses for the vaccination.

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GOI reiterated that people should not let their guard down and strictly abide by coronavirus preventive norms even after vaccination like putting on masks, maintaining social distancing, and washing hands. According to the central government, vaccine sites will offer either Covishield or Covaxin in order to avoid providing recipients the option to choose one vaccine over the other. Covid 19 vaccination is not compulsory for anyone and people can choose not to get vaccinated.

The Covishield vaccine has been developed by the University of Oxford and British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. It would be a 90-95% effective vaccine if there is a gap of two-to-three months between dose 1 and dose 2.

Covishield  is a highly effective vaccine against novel coronavirus. The vaccine is being touted as one of the most promising vaccines for India where cost and logistics play a big roll. Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which use a newer approach called mRNA making them more complex, fragile, and which require ultracold temperatures, Covishield is a vector vaccine that is slower but cheaper. More importantly, it can be kept stable for six months at standard refrigerator temperatures.

Covaxin has been developed by Indian Biotechnology Company Bharat Biotech and the clinical research body Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). It is an inactivated virus vaccine, based on one of the oldest methods for vaccinating people. In this vaccine, whole inactivated viruses are injected into the body to trigger an immune response. Reports show that these whole batches of coronavirus must be grown, “killed” using a chemical or heat and then made into a vaccine, making it a longer process.