GURUGRAM: Pawan Kumar had lost his job when he came into the employment of the health department as a
driver on contract last March. On Wednesday evening, 10 months into his new job, he was handed the biggest task of his life — bring the first batch of Covishield vaccines to the city with which the inoculations would start on January 16.
Kumar (40) and Bhu Dev, a general duty assistant with the health department who accompanied him, had relief writ large on their faces when they parked the refrigerated van with 85,480 doses at the regional vaccine store in Pataudi on Thursday. The vaccines, packed in nine cold boxes, were brought in from Kurukshetra, more than 200km away.
“It was a dark and long night,” said Kumar, who left
Gurugram on Wednesday at 9.15 pm and reached the vaccine storage facility at Kurukshetra at 3.30am. From a career spent mostly driving private cars, Kumar suddenly found himself as the man chosen for this historic journey, something that occurred to him only later because he had a pressing concern while at the wheel — the dense fog that blanketed large swathes of highway through which he had to safely negotiate his priceless cargo. “It was cold and the temperature kept dropping. Driving was tough because of dense fog,” he said.
But it was perhaps fitting that someone like Kumar, who hasn’t been home in Jhajjar since he joined the health department on March 21, was given the task of delivering the first safety net from the pandemic to thousands of frontline workers like him who have been putting duty before everything else to save as many lives as possible.
The return journey was comparatively easier. Kumar and Dev started from Kurukshetra at 9.15 am on Thursday and reached Gurugram at 1pm. “I was driving at a steady pace to keep the vaccines safe. We had gone to bed around 4am. But I could not sleep for two hours. I was excited. This was a very important job and I almost forced myself to sleep because I did not want to feel sleepy on the way,” Kumar said.
Before joining the health department, Kumar was a driver at a private firm for a few years. He had been looking for work when a friend told him about a contractual job at the health department. “I applied immediately. I was asked to drive ambulances and that gave me a sense of satisfaction because I felt I could help people. But after driving the
vaccine van, it feels like I am part of an army and I am serving the nation by being a part of the health team,” Kumar said.
Unlike Kumar, 53-year-old Dev, who has been working with the health department for 11 years, has handled vaccines before. “I have worked at vaccine stores all my life. I know which vaccine should be kept in what temperature and in which way,” Dev said.
At Kurukshetra, Dev said, he helped the local team load the vaccines in the van. “I carefully put all nine cold boxes inside the van and then, we started for Gurugram. After we reached, we took each box inside the district vaccine store,” said the Gurugram resident.
The vaccine van had police protection while travelling from Kurukshetra to Gurugram. Karan Singh, the Gurugram police inspector who escorted the van till Pataudi, said: “Our job was to ensure that no harm is caused to the van and stay alert in case of an emergency.”
Chief medical officer Dr Virender Yadav greeted Kumar and Dev with flowers when they reached Pataudi. “We need more people like them. It was a tough job, as they had to drive late at night in this cold,” said Yadav.