Abstract:

COVID-19 vaccines have been portrayed as saviors and were awaited with lot of eagerness. India has been one of the forerunners in development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines with the COVID-19 vaccination drive being launched on 16th January 2021. Despite the felt-need, Vaccine hesitancy has had significant influence on the overall vaccine acceptance & uptake.

This article provides a ground-up account on the strengths and challenges of the COVID-19 vaccination drive from the perspective of the 3Cs of vaccine hesitancy viz, Convenience, Confidence and Complacency. Policy transmission is as important as policy making. It is important that the spirit & ethos of decisions at the top should reflect on-ground. This article objectively elicits both the strengths & weaknesses from on-ground implementation point of view. Thus giving valuable insights on things that could have and can be done better.

Key words: COVID-19 vaccination, Vaccination roll-out, Vaccine hesitancy, Process engineering, Program design, Program implementation.