All India Institute of Medical Sciences Director Dr Randeep Guleria has said that common people may have to wait till 2022 for coronavirus vaccine to be easily available.
According to a News 18 report, Guleria who is also a member of the national COVID-19 task force, said: “In our country, the population is large; we need time to see how the vaccine can be bought from the market like a flu vaccine and take it. That will actually be the ideal situation.”
Gulera added that the “virus will not vanish with vaccination” but is likely “to help with rapid herd immunity.”
“Maintaining the cold chain, having adequate syringes, adequate needles and being able to deliver it to the remotest part of the country in a seamless manner is the biggest challenge,” he said.
The AIIMS chief added: “The second challenge is that there is more than one vaccine candidate that is being studied. So if we have a vaccine that comes out later and is seen to be more effective than the first one, how do we position it? How do we do a course correction? How to then decide who needs vaccine A and who needs vaccine B? A lot of decisions need to be taken as we go along.”
