NEW DELHI, Oct 13:
India is expected to have COVID-19 vaccine by early next year, and possibly from more than one source, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said today, and hoped that 40-50 crore doses could be provided to 20-25 crore people in the country by next July.
The Minister’s remarks came as the Health Ministry said that there is a continuous decline in the average daily new cases of COVID-19 in India for the last five weeks, and the doubling rate has gone from 3 days to 74.9 days.
Also on Tuesday, the number of new Coronavirus infections reported in 24 hours across the country dropped below 60,000-mark, with 55,342 new cases, while death toll climbed to 1,09,856 as the virus claimed 706 lives, according to the Ministry data. India has so far reported 71,75,880 Coronavirus cases and the total recoveries have crossed 62 lakh, according to the data.
The country has been recording less than 75,000 new infections daily for the fifth consecutive day and fatalities below 1,000 for 10 straight days, the ministry said.
“We’re expecting that early next year we should have vaccine in the country from maybe more than one source. We are formulating strategies for planned distribution of the vaccine in the country,” Vardhan tweeted.
In a tweet, he said he also hopes that by July next year nearly 40-50 crore doses will be made available to 20-25 crore people in the country.
Vardhan, who chaired the 21th meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 via video-conference here, said a strategy on how to provide vaccines to the “priority groups” was also discussed.
The Minister also appealed to everyone regarding observance of COVID19-appropriate behaviour during the forthcoming festival season and the winter months, “when the likelihood of an increase in the disease is high”, the Health Ministry said in a statement.
During the meeting, he also said with 62,27,295 recovered cases, India has the highest recovery rate of 86.78 percent in the world. “Fatality Rate of 1.53 percent is the lowest in the world and the doubling time has been successfully raised to 74.9 days in the last three days,” he said. (PTI)
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