West Bengal urban development minister and administrator of Kolkata Municipal Corporation Firhad Hakim became the second minister of a state government in the country to be administered with a shot of Covaxin, India\u2019s first indigenous COVID-19 vaccine candidate whose Phase III trial started on Wednesday. He became the first volunteer to be administered with the shot in Kolkata. He underwent necessary check-ups to see if he was fit for the shot.<\/p>\n
Firhad Hakim took to Twitter to write: \u201cThe fight against COVID is the biggest challenge for us now & finding its vaccine is of the utmost importance. Today as a soldier of my leader @MamataOfficial, I became the first person in Kolkata to take the trial of the vaccine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trial started in Kolkata\u2019s ICMR-National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED). \u201cI feel lucky to be part of the trial. I feel fine after taking the shot, and I don\u2019t care even if I were to die while taking part in the trial,\u201d Hakim said, adding that he is happy to contribute to anything that helps in doing away with coronavirus.<\/p>\n
Before Hakim, Haryana health minister Anil Vij was administered with a Covaxin shot last month as part of the vaccine\u2019s clinical trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Second minister in the country to come forward as volunteer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":11030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[246,346,258,165,301],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-bengal","8":"category-nation","9":"tag-coronavirus-in-india","10":"tag-coronavirus-in-kolkata","11":"tag-firhad-hakim","12":"tag-kolkata-municipal-corporation","13":"tag-west-bengal-government"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11029"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=11029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}