103-year-old Noida man takes COVID-19 vaccine, feels "fit and fine"

A senior citizen takes a COVID-19 vaccine shot. Pic/Ashish Raje

A 103-year-old Noida resident was administered the COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday, becoming the oldest person yet in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddh Nagar district to have got inoculated against the deadly coronavirus.

Mahabir Prasad Maheshwari was accompanied by seven senior citizen members of his family who took the vaccine too at a private hospital in the city.

"My father is feeling fit and fine," Maheshwari's eldest son Sudarshan Dayal (81) told PTI after the took the jab. "My father's age as per official documents is 103 years but he says he could be 106 or 107," he added.

He said there are 10 people in his joint family living in their house in Sector 12 of which seven "senior citizens" including himself went to Kailash Hospital on Tuesday to receive the vaccine shot.

Kailash Hospital spokesperson V B Joshi confirmed the first dose of vaccination to the Maheshwari family. Sudarshan said no one in his family here contracted COVID-19, whose first case was reported in the district in March 2020.

"We took all precautions as told by the government. We had switched to electronic means for ordering grocery and other domestic supplies. My father had an attendant but had stopped coming home during the lockdown and pandemic, and we were taking care of each other by ourselves," he said.

Maheshwari has three sons and four daughters - all of them above 60. He also dealt in stock market until the lockdown was announced in March last year after which visitors were stopped from coming to their home, according to his son.

"By God's blessings, my father is active even at this age. Till last year, he kept himself engaged in stock trades. Even now he relishes a game of cards with his grandchildren and playing with great-grandchildren," Sudarshan, a retired chartered accountant, said of his centenarian father.

"He walks around from bedroom to drawing room and other spaces in the home by himself although we have an attendant for his help. He used a walker for longer distances and has a wheel chair for outdoors," he added.

Maheshwari, who was born and brought up in Hapur when it was a part of the Ghaziabad district, moved to Noida in 1997 where he settled.

"We are thankful to Kailash Hospital, the government of India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for this vaccination process. We had been hearing negative rumours about the vaccine but turns out this is good for us. We hope COVID-19 will soon be a thing of the past," Sudarshan said.

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