The vaccine she received had travelled much further. It was taken by plane, truck and van some 1,700 km from the factory to Mathalput Community Health Centre where Jani waited, and it had to be kept cold the whole way.
Its safe arrival in Koraput district, where leftist guerrillas wage a low-level insurgency amid rolling hills and thick forests, was testament to detailed planning and groundwork by authorities in the state of Odisha.
But officials acknowledge this is just the tip of the iceberg.
A little over one million vaccine shots administered so far, mainly targeting key workers like Jani, are a tiny first phase of a vaccine programme that India hopes will eventually protect its 1.4 billion people from the coronavirus.
Only when the much larger third phase is launched, aimed at 270 million people deemed vulnerable, will the government know if its plan to distribute shots across sometimes hostile terrain and amid high temperatures will succeed.
“The problem will start from the third phase when the public will start coming,” said Madhusudan Mishra, Koraput’s district collector. “That will be a real challenge.”read more
The 1700km journey to deliver coronavirus vaccine to India’s rural health workers – The Wider Image
