Vaccine Likely For India In Early 2021, Roll-Out A Challenge: Scientist

A vaccine for the coronavirus will likely be ready by early 2021 but rolling it out safely across India’s 1.3 billion people will be the country’s biggest challenge in fighting its surging epidemic, a leading vaccine scientist told Bloomberg.

The country, which is host to some of the front-runner vaccine clinical trials, currently has no local infrastructure in place to go beyond immunising babies and pregnant women, said Gagandeep Kang, professor of microbiology at the Vellore-based Christian Medical College and a member of the WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety.

The timing of the vaccine is a contentious subject around the world. In the US, President Donald Trump has contradicted a top administration health expert by saying a vaccine would be available by October. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had promised an indigenous vaccine as early as mid-August, a claim the government and its top medical research body has since walked back.For a country of its size, and with a virus curve that shows no sign of flattening, a safe and quick vaccine is a top priority for the PM Modi’s administration. The country’s broken health-care system, already struggling to deliver adequate care before the outbreak, cannot cope with the strain of a prolonged pandemic. A strict lockdown implemented in late March led to the biggest contraction among major economies with gross domestic product shrinking 23.9% in the three months to June from a year earlier.

REPORT : KHABAR 24 EXPRESS

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