A 48-year ward boy died of heart attack in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district a day after taking vaccine on the inaugural day on Jan 16.
Though the health authorities, quoting the post mortem report, attribute the death to cardiac arrest, the son of the ward-boy Vishal said that he suspects that his father died because of corona vaccine. He said that his father had no serious disease but was suffering from mild pneumonia and cough. But after the shot his father complained of pain in chest.
On the other hand, the chief medical officer of Moradabad M C Garg said that Mahipal was kept under observation for half an hour after being inoculated and that he was in perfect condition and even performed night duty.
The death of Mahipal on Sunday evening increased fear about vaccination which started at over 3,000 centres in the country.
However, on the first day itself the number of those who turned up was much lesser than those enrolled. According to various media reports only 57 per cent health-workers got their jabs on the first day.
In Delhi alone only 53 per cent health workers enrolled for getting the shots turned up on the first day.
In Delhi Manish Kumar, a sanitary worker in AIIMS was the first to get the shot. Its director Randeep Guleria and V K Paul, a member of the NITI Aayog took Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, though there were strong reservations about it among health workers. The doctors of the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital refused to take Covaxin.
In all 447 persons who took vaccine on the first day across the country complained of some side-effect. Three of them had to be taken to hospital.
In Delhi 52 people complained of some sort of side-effects but only one of them had to be hospitalised before being discharged.
