Over 1.6 lakh healthcare and sanitary workers at the frontline of India's COVID-19 battle got their first jabs on Saturday as PM Narendra Modi launched one of the world's biggest coronavirus vaccine rolled out the world's largest vaccination drive against the pandemic, showing the light at the end of a 10-month tunnel that upended millions of lives.
More than one crore cases and 1.5 lakh fatalities later, India took its first steps out of the pandemic with shots of the Covishield and Covaxin vaccines being administered at medical centres across the country to a collective sigh of relief that this could finally be the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 trauma.
The Union Health ministry said that 1,65,714 beneficiaries were inoculated with COVID-19 vaccines till 5.30 PM across India on the first day at 3,351 session sites.
