HYDERABAD: The dry run of Covid-19 vaccination across Telangana on Saturday gave lakhs of healthcare workers hopes of normalcy returning to their professional and personal lives.
Several of them are bogged down by the elaborate precautions they have to take, not just at their work places but also at their homes.
Fifty-five-year-old Rashida Begum, a class 4 sanitation staff at the Nampally Hospital, was one of the beneficiaries participating in the dry run of the vaccine roll out on Saturday.
“I live in a joint family, where I have eight children and four grandchildren. I really struggled in the last 10 months to distance myself from my entire family, in fear of spreading the virus to them. In the initial months, I even wore masks at home and used to stay separately. After returning from work, I would directly go and sanitise all my clothes. With learning to live with these precautions, the fear of infecting the family was somehow became a part and parcel of my life,” said Begum.
“The vaccine won’t magically fix things; I will still be very cautious. But I think some amount of tension and anxiety will go away once I get the actual vaccine,” she added. Senhalatha K, a 50-year-old head nurse at the same facility, echoed the same.
“At one point, I began fearing that I would infect my patients, who most often come in with compromised immunity. Wearing the PPE kits and masks all day is not easy and while we won’t relax these preacautions even after the vaccine, there would be some mental relief,” she said. For 38-year-old D Sujatha, a staff nurse in the hospital, getting vaccinated would mean being able to hold her children properly.
“What scared me was the deaths of nurses across the country and in our state as well. So many of them caught the virus and fell sick with complications. I am optimistic this vaccine will bring back some normalcy for us and I urge the public to wholeheartedly use it,” she said.
Telangana will be begin the process of vaccinating nearly 2.75 lakh healthcare workers within a fortnight through both private and government services.