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Coronavirus: Indians cheer, pray as vaccines ‘like gold’ arrive for massive immunisation drive
- Health workers will be some of the first to receive the jabs in the first phase, which aims to inoculate some 300 million people starting from Saturday
- But observers say the real test will only come later, once the vaccine roll-out reaches the hundreds of millions of Indians not living in big cities
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It was 4am but a large crowd had still gathered outside the Serum Institute of India in Pune on Tuesday, its members jostling for position to get a better look as the gates of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer opened and a convoy of refrigerated trucks started rolling out.
Contained within were the first doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine produced by Serum – 6.44 million shots ready to be flown to 14 cities across the country, kick-starting what officials have called the biggest vaccine drive on Earth.
Smiling onlookers applauded and snapped photos to mark what Prime Minister Narendra Modi characterised as a “decisive turning point” in India’s fight against the coronavirus, which has infected more than 10 million people in the country so far and claimed over 152,000 lives.
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Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute, said it was an “emotional moment for the team” as he posted a picture to Twitter of himself perched on the back bumper of one of the trucks stacked high with boxes of vaccines.
Health workers, police officers and sanitation staff will be among the first to receive the jabs when the initial phase of India’s vaccine roll-out – to cover 300 million people – gets under way on Saturday. Modi will launch the inoculation programme at 10.30am online, with recipients getting their shots at some 3,000 vaccination sites across the country.
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