Union health minister Harsh Vardhan will on Sunday talk about when the country is likely to get a vaccine against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and who will be the first to get the shots against the viral infection.
In his weekly address Sunday Samvaad, the health minister will share the country’s way forward in tackling the coronavirus pandemic.
“Tune-In tomorrow at 1PM to learn more about India’s #COVID19Vaccine plan ! When will we get #COVID19 vaccination? Who will be vaccinated first? What are the Government’s #COVID_19 immunization targets for Q2 2021? All these & more will be answered tomorrow on #SundaySamvaad!” Vardhan said in a tweet on Saturday.
Earlier this week, the health minister had said that research to develop a Covid-19 vaccine is being “done expeditiously” and that it is most likely to be ready by early 2021.
“There are at least three viable such vaccine candidates that are in the phase of clinical trials right now in the country. We are hopeful that within the first quarter of 2021 it will be available,” Vardhan had said during a press briefing.
In India, the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford’s vaccine candidate being produced in collaboration with Pune-based pharma firm Serum Institute of India is in the third phase of trials while drugmaker Zydus Cadila launched phase 2 trials for its vaccine candidate on August 6. Another domestic pharma firm Bharat Biotech began phase 2 trials from September.
Also, the government may consider a plan to allow companies, especially large ones in strategically important businesses, to strike direct deals with Covid-19 vaccine developers to secure doses for their employees, officials familiar with the matter have told HT.
There were 6,549,373 cases of the coronavirus disease while 101,782 have died of the infection in India, according to the health ministry’s dashboard on Sunday. Even as recoveries have shot up to 5,509,966, there are still 937,625 active cases in the country.
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