Vaccine expected early next year, from more than 1 source: Union health minister Harsh Vardhan

“We’re expecting that early next year we should have vaccine in the country from maybe more than one source. Our expert groups are formulating strategies to plan on how to roll out the distribution of the vaccine in the country,” the Health Minister was quoted as saying.

The World Health Organization (WHO) chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan has also said that a vaccine will be ready for registration by the end of 2020 or early next year at the earliest.

“As you know, we have about 40 vaccine candidates now in some stage of clinical trials, and 10 of them are in the phase three trials, which are the late-stage clinical trials, which will tell us about both the efficacy and the safety,” she said.

At present, four coronavirus vaccines are in advanced stages of pre-clinical trial in India. The Minister had earlier said that a COVID-19 vaccine is likely to be available by the first quarter of 2021.

On Sunday, the minister had said that considering the large population size of India, one vaccine or vaccine manufacturer will not be able to fulfil the requirements of vaccinating the whole country. “

Therefore, we are open to assessing the feasibility of introducing several COVID-19 vaccines in the country as per their availability for the Indian population,” he had said.