Harsh Vardhan also mentioned that the expert groups are working on formulating techniques on how to plan the distribution of coronavirus vaccine in the country so that people resident even in the remotest areas are vaccinated.
Dr Harsh Vardhan said during a meeting of the Group of Ministers said,"We're expecting that early next year, we should have vaccines in the country from maybe more than one source. Our expert groups are already formulating and devising strategies to plan on how to roll out the distribution of the vaccines in the country, who do we give the vaccine first and then, of course, we are strengthening the cold chain facilities.”
Currently, four coronavirus vaccine preclinical trials in India have reached advanced stages. COVID-19 vaccine will likely be available for the people by the first quarter of next year, the minister said earlier.
"Therefore, we are open to assessing the feasibility of introducing several COVID-19 vaccines in the country as per their availability for the Indian population," he had said.
Harsh Vardhan's judgement on the availability of COVID vaccine in India and the plans of its distribution in the country has come a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) said it believes they can go for the registration of a coronavirus vaccine by December 2020 or early next year at the earliest, as they expect a vaccine to be ready soon.
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WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said 40 coronavirus vaccine candidates are in the stage of clinical trials whereas 10 of them have moved to the Phase 3 trials. She said this development, "tells us about both the efficacy and the safety. So, the best we could make a guess or predict, looking at when a trial started and when it is likely to have enough data to submit to the regulators, is earliest from December of 2020 into the early part of 2021.”
The daily average number of new coronavirus cases reported in the country has dropped below 60,000, even though the caseload has increased to 71,75,880. The total recovery tally crossed 62 lakh, the Union Health Ministry data said today. India is the second-worst affected country by the coronavirus pandemic in the world.