Background – India is considered as the vaccine manufacturing hub of the world and launched a mega vaccine drive for Covid-19, nevertheless it has encountered vaccine hesitancy. Objectives -This study was done, with the objective to find out the Covid-19 vaccination coverage and its determinants among the elderly in a rural area of Kerala as well to find out any change in Covid appropriate behaviour among the vaccinees and various AEFI occurrences in this group. Methods – We have done a cross sectional study in a rural area of Kerala with a sample of 684 persons selected by cluster sampling in October 2021 and the data collection tool adopted was interview schedule with a pretested questionnaire. Results – The prevalence of Covid vaccination coverage were 95.3% (95% CI 93.7-96.9). The associated factors were age(p=0.013), education status of the vaccines (p=0.01) and education of spouse (0.001). The predictors found on regression analysis were, old age (adjusted odds ratio with 95%CI .260 (0.09-0.74) and low education level of spouse (adjusted odds ratio with 95%CI 3.613 (1.367-9.551). The statistical difference between the adverse effects after the first dose (46.9%) and second dose (32.5%) of covid vaccination was significant (p value from Mc-Nemar test =0.000) and no statistically significant change was found in Covid appropriate behaviour (p=0.5). Conclusion – India is a country where vaccination drive was ramped up in a phased manner as soon as possible with increased availability of the vaccines and this study shows the rural population itself had a big coverage and covid vaccination programme is poised for success.

Background: The COVID vaccination programme in conjunction with other control measures, are needed to control the COVID-19 pandemic. The mass vaccination with COVID vaccines, will help to increase the herd immunity. This study is an attempt to assess the knowledge and attitude of the adult population of a panchayat area of Thrissur district of Kerala towards COVID-19 vaccination and socio-demographic determinants associated with it.Methods: We have done a cross-sectional study among 350 study participants selected by cluster sampling technique from a panchayat area of Thrissur district of Kerala and the data was collected, using a pretested semi structured questionnaire. The knowledge and attitude were assessed by proportion and association of socio-demographic determinants was found out using ‘t’ test and ‘ANOVA’ test.Results: The result obtained, showed 94.3% of persons responded that there is a vaccine for preventing COVID and 85.2% were aware that Covishield and Covaxin were the vaccine freely available. The 78.3% respondents knew that there should be 84 days between the doses of Covishield and 77.1% knew that 28 days for Covaxin. The 100% respondents had attitude to take the vaccine and 99.1% were ready to continue COVID prevention measures even after vaccination. As per this study, younger age (p=0.04) and religion (0.000) had an association with knowledge.Conclusions: The high level of knowledge and a100% attitude towards COVID vaccination may be due to high political will and accountability of the governments towards it. The places with low acceptance rate can be able to model on it.