New Delhi: Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said that he is `confident` that the coronavirus vaccine will be ready in the next three to four months. Minister Harsh Vardhan was addressing the FICCI FLO webinar on `The Shifting Healthcare Paradigm During and Post-Covid` when he made the statement.
New Delhi: Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said that he is `confident` that the coronavirus vaccine will be ready in the next three to four months. Minister Harsh Vardhan was addressing the FICCI FLO webinar on `The Shifting Healthcare Paradigm During and Post-Covid` when he made the statement.
"I am confident that COVID-19 vaccine will be ready in the next three-four months. Priority for the vaccine will be designed on the basis of scientific data. Health care workers and corona warriors will naturally be prioritised followed by elderly and disease-prone people. Very detailed planning is underway for vaccine dissemination. An e-vaccine intelligence platform has been created to discuss the blueprint for the same. Tracking and tracing of the vaccine would be neck-deep once it`s available for the public. Hopefully, 2021 should be a better year for all of us," news agency ANI quoted the Health Minister as saying. Vardhan further estimated that by July-August 2021, 400-500 million doses will be made available for 25-30 crore people.
"It is natural the vaccine distribution would have to be prioritised. As you know the healthcare workers, who are corona warriors, will be on priority. Then, people who are above 65 years of age they have been prioritised, then those from 50-65 years of age have been prioritised," news agency PTI quoted Vardhan as saying. "Then those below 50 years who have other diseases. It is all being decided by experts with a scientific point of view. We have made a very detailed, meticulous plan on this. What we would have to do in March-April next year, we have started planning for it from now only," Vardhan added, PTI reported.
The minister said one can protect oneself from this deadly virus with small precautions like wearing a good quality mask properly, maintaining social distance and taking care of hand-hygiene. India`s coronavirus caseload mounted to 89,58,483 on Thursday with 45,576 infections being reported in a day, while the death toll climbed to 1,31,578 with 585 new fatalities. The phase-3 trial of the Oxford vaccine of the Serum Institute is almost near completion, while the phase-3 clinical trial of the indigenously-developed vaccine candidate of the Bharat Biotech and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has already started.
Dr Reddy`s Laboratories will soon start the combined phase-2 and phase-3 clinical trials of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, in India. Also, the Biological E Limited has started early phases 1 and 2 human trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE said their vaccine candidate was found to be more than 95 per cent effective in preventing COVID-19, while Moderna on Monday said its vaccine candidate against COVID-19 found it to have an efficacy of 94.5 per cent.
