No room for vaccine hesitancy: This village in MP vaccinates all eligible residents with 1st dose of COVID-19

Bhopal, Jun 18: The panchayat of Mehgawan Pariyat village has managed to administer the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine to all its eligible residents, including two centenarians, making it the first village in Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur district to be completely covered in the inoculation drive, a senior official said on Thursday.

The village, which comes under Panagar block, has 1,002 registered voters, of whom 956 have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine till Wednesday, while the remaining 46 persons are those who have recently recovered from the infection, pregnant women and those living outside the village, the official from the public relations department said.

The first dose has been administered to all of them, while many of them have received the second jab during the ongoing vaccination drive, he said. What's more, centenarians Tijjo Bai (102) and Triveni Bai (100) took personal interest in getting vaccinated and gave a befitting reply to those spreading rumours against the vaccine, the official said.

At least six teams of the health department have been formed to carry out the drive, and one of the teams is dedicated to inoculate the elderly, physically challenged and sick persons at their homes, he added. Expressing happiness over the feat achieved by the village, Panagar MLA Sushil Tiwari "Indu" gave Rs 5 lakh from his local area development fund for the development works in the village and also handed Rs 5,000 each to the two centenarians for encouraging others to get vaccinated.

Sub-divisional magistrate N S Arjaria said the vaccination drive was successful because of the active participation of villagers, who not only got themselves vaccinated, but also gave information about the sick, elderly and divyang residents and helped in getting them inoculated.