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Expect more than one coronavirus vaccine in early 2021, says Harsh Vardhan
13-October-2020

India is expected to receive coronavirus vaccine from more than one source in early 2021, Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan said on Tuesday. He said that the expert groups are formulating strategies to plan the distribution of coronavirus vaccine in the country.

"We are expecting that early next year we should have the vaccine in the country from maybe more than one source. Our expert groups are formulating strategies to plan on how to roll out the distribution of the vaccine in the country," he said at Group of Ministers meeting.

The minister's remarks come justa day after the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it expects a vaccine to be ready for registration by the end of 2020 or early next year at the earliest.

"As you know, we have about 40 vaccine candidates now in some stage of clinical trials, and 10 of them are in the phase three trials, which are the late-stage clinical trials, which will tell 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," WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan had told reporters.

Earlier on Sunday, Harsh Vardhan had warned citizens to stay away from large congregations and follow the guidelines issued by the government regarding precautions in view of the upcoming festive season. "The possibility of increased novel coronavirus transmission during winters as it is a respiratory virus and the transmission of respiratory viruses is known to increase during the colder weather," he had said at a programme.