An 85-year-old man from India’s Bihar state has claimed to have gotten 11 COVID vaccines in a year.
Brahmdeo Mandal is a retired postman from Bihar’s Madhepura district. He was stopped this January from taking his 12th shot of vaccine. Brahmdeo Mandal claims that the Covid-19 vaccine has made his ailments, many of them considered normal at his age, disappear.
“After taking the jabs my body aches and pain disappeared,” Mandal told the BBC. “I used to have knee pain and walked with a stick. Now I don’t. I feel fine.”
After getting the first shot in February of 2021, he felt so good that he repeatedly kept taking the shots. By September of last year, he had already received nine injections and managed to get two more by the end of the year, using different ID cards.
The investigation has revealed that he has taken at least eight Covid-19 vaccine doses, two of which appear to have been administered within 30 minutes. To ensure no one recognized him, he traveled to vaccination centers in neighboring districts, one more than 100 kilometers away. It is still unclear how he bypassed the online record system.
“I felt that it was helping my general health, my backache has improved, my general weakness improved, and my appetite improved,” the 85-year-old said. “I was always looking for new vaccine camps and would go there. Nobody would recognize me.”
Brahmdeo Mandal’s case went viral in India, sparking heated debates about the effects of the Covid-19 vaccine, and the morality of the man’s actions in a time when the country was trying to convince people to get vaccines.
Mandal was reportedly arrested and a complaint of misleading the health department was lodged against him. The Times of India reports that the 85-year-old threatened to take his own life if he is prosecuted. The man’s wife pleaded with authorities to give him a pass, explaining that he was only trying to treat his ailments.
“He felt a glimmer of hope after receiving the first jab. He is now completely cured because of the vaccine shots,” the woman said.
