Shunning the usual Tibetan mantra that love and compassion work as well as medicine, the Dalai Lama urged followers to “take this injection” as he received his first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination in India on Saturday. “This is very, very helpful, very good,” he said during his televised vaccination.

India, one of the worst-hit countries of the pandemic, hopes to vaccinate as many as 300 million citizens by July. Tighter restrictions have led to a drop in daily cases from around 90,000 a day to under 20,000. But India has logged more than 11 million cases and more than 157,000 COVID-19-related deaths since the pandemic began. The country has approved the AstraZeneca vaccine and the Covaxin produced by Indian firm Bharat Biotech.