It was a hopeful and cheerful morning for Vikas Maurya, Director, and Head of Department, Pulmonology, Fortis Hospital Shalimar Bagh as he was the first one to get the COVID-19 vaccine in his hospital as part of the first phase of roll out in India on Saturday. “I was the first to get the vaccine today morning,” he told Opoyi sounding joyous and happy.

“I think it was quite good, the process was quite smooth and went very well. I was the first one to get the vaccine and there was no issue with it. There was no pain and no fever so it was a smooth experience,” said Maurya.

Talking about people’s concern for the side-effects, he said that they made them clear that the vaccine has been made after due consideration and safety.

“I think people are listening to a lot of things from outside and there were lots of apprehensions about the vaccine, which we tried to clear them off. Also, I think now because it has been taken by health care workers and others, it will boost the confidence of other people who are having apprehension about safety issues and irrelevant things like infertility,” he told Opoyi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched India’s coronavirus vaccine drive program via video-conferencing on Saturday. He said that there are over 100 countries with a population of less than three crore and India will vaccinate those many people in the first phase.

“ In the second phase, we’ve to take this number to 30 crores,” the PM said, adding that only three countries (China, India and the US) have a population of over 30 crores. The inoculation drive started thirteen months after the first COVID-19 outbreak in China’s Wuhan