The Union Health Ministry on Monday said that 580 adverse events following immunisation were reported across the country since India’s coronavirus vaccination drive began on January 16. An adverse event following immunisation, or AEFI, is any unexpected medical occurrence following inoculation but may or may not be related to the vaccine or the vaccination process.

The ministry said that 1,48,266 beneficiaries were vaccinated till 5 pm on Monday, the third day of the vaccination drive. “A total of 3,81,305 beneficiaries have been vaccinated till today through 7,704 sessions, as per the provisional report,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry added that seven people needed hospitalisation and two people died following the inoculation. However, the government pointed out that the deaths were not related to the vaccination. “No case of serious/severe AEFI attributable to vaccination till date,” Manohar Agnani, the additional secretary in the health ministry, said at a press conference, according to PTI.

A 46-year-old health worker in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district died on Sunday evening, a day after being administered a coronavirus vaccine. Mahipal Singh, who worked as a ward boy at the district hospital, had complained of breathlessness and tightness in the chest. The ministry said that he died because of cardiopulmonary disease.

The second person who died was a resident of Bellary, Karnataka. The 43-year-old was administered the vaccine on January 16 and died on Monday. “The cause of death is anterior wall infarction with cardiopulmonary failure,” the ministry said.

The Karnataka government said that the man, Nagaraju, came to work on Monday morning and complained of chest pain, reported NDTV. He collapsed and was admitted to a hospital but could not be saved.

Karnataka Health Minister K Sudhakar said that Nagaraju did not suffer a heart attack because of the inoculation. “The man had a massive heart attack,” Sudhakar said. “He had a history of diabetes and comorbidity.”

Of the seven people who needed hospitalisation, three were from Delhi. Two of them have been discharged, while one person, who reported fainting, is under observation at the Max Hospital in Delhi’s Patparganj area.

Two AEFI cases were reported in Karnataka and one each in Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh. All of them are under observation in different hospitals, the ministry said.

India, which has reported the highest number of coronavirus infections after the United States, plans to vaccinate around 30 crore people with two doses in the first six to eight months of the year. The recipients include 3 crore doctors, nurses and other front-line workers, to be followed by people who are either over 50 or have illnesses that make them vulnerable to Covid-19.

Beneficiaries, however, will not be able to choose between the Oxford University-AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine, produced by the Serum Institute of India, and Covaxin, a government-backed, indigenous one from Bharat Biotech, whose efficacy is not known.