‘If eligible, get your shot soon’: PM Narendra Modi receives second dose of Covid-19 vaccine

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday received his second dose of coronavirus vaccine at Delhi’s premier All India Institutes of Medical Sciences. The prime minister was administered the first dose of the covaxin on March 1.

“Got my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at AIIMS today. Vaccination is among the few ways we have, to defeat the virus. If you are eligible for the vaccine, get your shot soon,” PM Modi tweeted and shared a link to the CoWin website, a portal to register for the vaccine.

The two nurses who administered the vaccine to the prime minister today are P. Niveda from Puducherry and Nisha Sharma from Punjab.

The vaccination drive was kicked off in January with healthcare workers and frontline workers getting inoculated first. It was followed by the second phase in which senior citizens (above 60 years of age) and people aged 45 or older with comorbidities were eligible. In the third phase, all those above 45 years are eligible.

With rapidly rising coronavirus numbers in the last month, India is now grappling with the second wave of infection. India detected 115,736 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, the highest so far. Of the total, Maharashtra reported 55,469 cases while Chhattisgarh scaled a new peak of 9,921 cases. Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi reported more than 5,000 cases each.

Amid the rising number of cases, many states have started pushing the Centre to supply more vaccine doses and open up the vaccination process to all individuals above the age of 18. However, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, came down heavily on Maharashtra, Delhi and Punjab — the states contributing most to the second surge of Covid-19 cases — and said they were “trying to divert attention from their poor vaccination efforts by just continuously shifting the goalposts”.