‘After 2nd wave people queued up for jabs’

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15.01.2022

R Trivedi, who retired from Gandhi Medical College (GMC) as a professor of paediatrics, is a vocal advocate for vaccination. Way back in 1962, as a medical student, he went around convincing people for the polio vaccination. In the past year, he has done the same for the Covid vaccine. With a heavy heart, he recalled how people known to him, young and old, got sick with Covid,some even died, because they were not vaccinated. “Go get the vaccine,” he tells those still hesitating to take their second or even first dose That’s what vaccinator Jaya Patil tells people around her, too. She was on duty at the launch of vaccination drive and administered hundreds of doses in next 9 months in Bhopal’s main tertiary care hospital. “Earlier, it took a certain amount of counselling to convince people who had vaccine hesitancy. After the second wave, people queued to get the jabs,” she said.

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Thanks to vax, I’m here: Doc who took Bhopal’s first dose

Bhopal: The gap was nine months -from detection of the Covid-19 case in Madhya Pradesh on March 20, 2020, to the first dose of vaccine on January 16, 2021, to protect against the pandemic. Now, 365 days later, to understand the magnitude of mission vaccination in the state, scribble nine digits — 10,72,82,293.

That was the number of doses administered in Madhya Pradesh till 6pm on Saturday. It’s more than the population of at least 148 countries and territories. By the time this paper was printed, there would have been hundreds more.

The first person to get the shot of life in Bhopal was octogenarian Dr S K Trivedi. Over the next 52 weeks, he has got three doses — ‘boosted’ as it were to take on the virus. His latest dose was earlier this week, on January10.

Summing up his three jabs, he says, “Let’s put it this way. During the Delta wave, I was sick for a couple of days. Thanks to vaccination, I am able to talk to you again.”