All India Institute of Medical Sciences Director Dr Randeep Guleria on Wednesday said that Covid-19 vaccines may be available in the open market by the end of this year or “before that”, reported ANI.
“Vaccine will be available in the open market only when prime targets – people to be vaccinated – are covered and there’s an equivalence of supply and demand,” Guleria said. “Hopefully, there would be such a situation by year-end or before that. Then there would be a likelihood of vaccine to come to the open market.”
Guleria made the remarks after getting the second shot of a vaccine against Covid-19. The first dose was administered to Guleria on January 16, when the country’s vaccination programme began.
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Coronavirus: India records 11,610 cases, 100 deaths in a day; recovery rate at 97.3%
In India, a total of 89,99,230 healthcare and other frontline workers have been vaccinated so far. Of these, 2,76,943 received their inoculation on Tuesday.
The health ministry said that only one out of 2,000 beneficiaries have reported minor effects post vaccination, noting that the rate of adverse event following immunisation was recorded at 0.05%. A total of 36 cases of hospitalisation and 29 cases of deaths were reported among those who have been vaccinated till 4 pm on February 16, the ministry said. However, it clarified that no case of serious or severe “adverse event following immunisation” or deaths are attributable to vaccination till date.
India on Wednesday recorded 11,610 new coronavirus cases, taking its tally to 1,09,37,320, the health ministry data showed. Deaths rose by 100 to 1,55,913. As many as 1,06,44,858 people have recovered from the infection, pushing the recovery rate to 97.33%. The active caseload went down to 1,36,549, which is 1.25% of the total positive cases.
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