AIIMS Director Dr. Randeep Guleria, also a member of the national task force on the coronavirus management in the country, has said that common people will have to wait till 2022 for a shot of the coronavirus vaccine.
The AIIMS director said it will take “more than a year” for a coronavirus vaccine to be easily available in the Indian markets. Randeep Guleria said for normal people, it will take “more than a year”.
“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,” Randeep Guleria said in an interview with CNN-News18.
Earlier in October, WHO’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said there would be at least one effective vaccine by 2021 but it would be available “only in limited quantities”.
“Most people agree, the vaccine should be given to healthcare workers, and frontline workers you need to define which of them are at highest risk, then the elderly, and so on,” Swaminathan said on prioritizing who gets the vaccine first.
“There will be a lot of guidance coming out, but I think an average person, a healthy young person might have to wait until 2022 to get a vaccine,” she said.
“So in 2021 we will have vaccines but they will be in limited quantities so we worked on a framework that how the countries will prioritize on whom to give those vaccines,” she said.
“People tend to think that on the first of January or the first of April, I”m going to get the vaccine, and then things will be back to normal. It”s not going to work like that,” Swaminathan added.
Dr. Vinod Paul, member of Niti Aayog and the head of a panel advising the prime minister on the country’s efforts to produce and roll-out the inoculation said, “Health workers, both in public and private sector across rural and urban India are fighting the battle. Also, municipal workers and police people fighting everywhere should be a priority.”
According to a senior official, the frontline workers will be the first ones to get vaccinated in India.
Anganwadi centers, schools, panchayat buildings, and other such setups will be used in addition to healthcare facilities as vaccination sites.
State governments will then start identifying the buildings which can be used as vaccination booths under the special Covid-19 immunization program.