Reena Jani rose early, finished her chores in the crisp January cold and walked uphill to the road skirting her remote tribal hamlet of Pendajam in eastern India.
Riding pillion on a neighbour's motorcycle for 40 minutes through hillsides dotted with paddy fields, the 34-year-old tribal health worker headed for the Mathalput Community Health Centre.
Jani's name was on a list of 100 health workers at the centre, making her one of the first Indians to be inoculated against COVID-19 earlier this month, as the country rolls out a vaccination programme the government calls the world's biggest.
Left: Porija waits in a traffic jam as he transports the vaccine developed by the Oxford/AstraZeneca from the state vaccine store to a regional vaccine store. Right: Porija drives.
Then it was over to veteran health department driver Lalu Porija. He drove his delivery van all night to reach the site, and he now had to truck the vaccines 500 km (310 miles) back to Koraput with an armed policeman in plain clothes for company.
"I am feeling a little tired," said Porija, as he stopped to sip tea late that evening after a traffic jam delayed the return trip by several hours.
Negotiating cows, debris, thick fog and hairpin bends, and fighting fatigue, Porija drove nearly 24 hours within three days to collect and deliver the vaccine shots to Koraput town.
Left: Jani’s daughter tries to find signal on her phone so she can ring her mother the day before Jani is vacinated, in Pendajam village. Right: Jani’s phone hangs outside her home to receive signal.
In Koraput, a team of officials spent months putting together a local COVID-19 vaccination plan, officials said.
With much of the district lacking internet access, they chose vaccination sites with good connectivity and conducted dry runs, said Koraput's top health official Dr Makaranda Beura.
And where mobile coverage was patchy, like Jani's Pendajam village, health workers were called to meetings to inform them of vaccination plans, followed by visits from supervisors to people registered to be inoculated.
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In a survey conducted by New Delhi-based online platform LocalCircles, 62% of 17,000 respondents were hesitant to get vaccinated immediately, mainly due to worries over possible adverse reactions.
The fears are rife among health workers too, prompting India this week to appeal to frontline workers not to refuse vaccines after many states failed to meet initial vaccination targets.
Dr Tapas Rajan Behera, the medical officer in charge of the Mathalput Community Health Centre, said authorities were aware of possible reluctance to take the vaccine and had instructed health workers to allay fears over safety.
A jittery Jani eventually received her shot, partly vaccinating her against COVID-19: one tiny step in India's mission to beat the pandemic.
PHOTO EDITING MARIKA KOCHIASHVILI; WRITING Devjyot Ghoshal; LAYOUT JULIA DALRYMPLE