Hundred-and-one year-old man gets his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at private hospital in Delhi

Centenarian Brij Prakash Gupta, who was born a year after the end of the deadly Spanish Flu, received his first shot of COVID-19 vaccine in Delhi on Wednesday, his son said. Gupta, now 101, stepped out of his home in south Delhi “for the first time since March 20, last year” to get his Covishield jab, son Vimal Gupta said, adding his father is doing fine. “My father was born on 26 November 1920 in Delhi. He had worked as a manager in a bank in Delhi. Since, the bank’s office was located in old Delhi, and there was communal violence during the Partition, he resigned from the bank service and started his own business after that,” he said. Vimal Gupta, a resident of Karol Bagh, and himself a businessman, said, he and his wife got vaccinated, a few days ago, and his father received his first jab at BLK Hospital here. “He is the oldest person to have been vaccinated till date at BLK Hospital,” a spokesperson of the facility said. Vimal Gupta, 65, said he, his wife and his son had contracted COVID-19 infection last year, and “now, we are all fine”. “My grandfather was Shiamlal Gupta, a civil engineer in the then Public Works Department of the government. He was part of the team that built the Parliament House building and the India Gate in the 1920s. He died in the 1940s,” he said. On March 15, Kewal Krishan, who was just five years old during the deadly Spanish Flu of 1918 and later became part of the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly of India, received his first shot of COVID-19 vaccine at a private facility here. Krishan, now 107, had also stepped out of his home in south Delhi “for the first time since the lockdown was imposed late March in 2020” to get his Covishield jab, his son Anil Krishna had told PTI. Tulsi Das Chawla, who was born a few months before the outbreak of the Spanish Flu, had received his first shot of COVID-19 vaccine at a private facility here on March 5. Chawla,104, was given a dose of Covishield at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and he had not exhibited any adverse effects on that day.