As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc in the world, scientists all over the world are racing to produce a safe and effective vaccine against the virus.
In India, Serum Institute of India (SII) is at the forefront in the battle against the disease. Now, Dr Suresh Jadhav, executive director of the Serum Institute of India has said that the country might get the vaccine by March 2021.
As per the report by Indian Express, he was speaking at the India Vaccine Accessibility e-Summit. Jadhav also stated that SII will be ready with 60-70 million dosages of vaccines by December 2020, but that will come in the market in 2021 after the clearance of licencing.
On October 13, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had also said that they are expecting COVID-19 vaccine to be available from early next year. Speaking during Group of Ministers meeting, he said that there is a possibility that the vaccine will be available from more than one source.
While talking about the distribution strategy, the minister informed that the expert groups are formulating strategies to plan on how to roll out the distribution of the vaccine in the country.
Before that, on October 12, Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO chief scientist had stated that WHO believes that a vaccine against the coronavirus disease will be ready for registration by the end of 2020 or early next year at the earliest.
(With inputs from agencies)
