64 Time February 28/March 7, 2022
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Jaikishan
Ram, 77, treks
back home after
receiving a dose
of the COVID-19
vaccine in
Padampuri,
India, on Sept. 3To access the main road from his home high in
the Himalayan mountains of the Indian state of
Uttarakhand, Ram had to first climb down a mile
of steep, unpaved, sloping path. From there, it was
another 90 minutes on the main road to the village
of Padampuri. That’s where the only government
hospital and walk-in COVID-19 vaccination center
in the Dhari area—home to some 30,000 people
spread across 46 villages—is located.
It was early September, and India was still re-
covering from a devastating second COVID-19
wave, driven primarily by the Delta variant. Ac-
cording to official government figures, more than
400,000 Indians died between June 1, 2020,
and July 1, 2021, but a recent report in the jour-
nal Science estimates that the true toll might have
been as high as 3.2 million deaths. The majority
of those—2.7 million—occurred in three months,
April through June 2021.
In the following months, cases of COVID-19
dropped significantly, and hospitalizations re-
mained relatively low even during an Omicron-
driven third wave, which peaked in late January.
This is in part thanks to nationwide efforts to stop
the virus. India began rolling out COVID-19 vac-
cines in January 2021, starting with health work-
ers, then for people over 50 and those with co-
morbidities. It took a while for the vaccine rollout
to pick up pace, but by Jan. 30 of this year, India’s
government said 75% of its adult population had
received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
As a septuagenarian, Ram was eligible early
on, but at first he stayed home, uncertain about
the safety of the vaccines and wary of the trip he’d
have to take to get his shots. But months of per-
sistence by health workers in Padampuri—and
especially by his daughter-in-law, who is part of
Dhari’s vaccination team—managed to persuade
him. “I saw how hard she worked on this,” Ram
says. “She urged me to take the vaccine, if not for
myself, then for my family and the community.”
His change of heart wasn’t unusual. In
WORLD
On the day he was
scheduled for a COVID-19
vaccination, 77-year-old
Jaikishan Ram wrapped
himself in a well-worn wool
jacket, cap, and sweater to
prepare for the three-hour
trek down the mountain.
this isolated region that spans more than
30 sq. mi.—most of it rugged terrain that rises to
7,000 ft. of elevation—by the beginning of Octo-
ber, 100% of eligible adults had received a first vac-
cine dose. That equates to some 28,000 people, ac-
cording to Himanshu Kandpal, the chief medical
officer of the Dhari block, who is in charge of Pad-
ampuri’s medical center. The state of Uttarakhand
as a whole reached that same milestone in mid-
October, with all eligible adults—some 7.4 mil-
lion people—receiving a first dose, usually of the
Oxford- AstraZeneca vaccine, known locally as