Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Saturday expressed hope that if all goes well, India will get a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of this year. Speaking to an India Today TV reporter, Dr Harsh Vardhan said, “The world is working towards discovering a vaccine. There are 26 vaccine candidates around the world that are in the clinical trials phase. Apart from this, there are 139 candidates that are being developed on different levels and in pre-clinical trials.”
“The vaccine candidates in India have made a little more progress than them. There are around half a dozen in total. Three of them have reached the first, second and third phases respectively,” the Health Minister said.
Dr Harsh Vardhan added, “As we are analysing their progress, we are fully confident that their trials will be completed within this year itself and their results will come out in front of the whole nation and the world. And I have complete faith that we will be successful too.”
“As soon as an effective vaccine is available for the country, we will start its manufacturing in India and make it available to the public,” he further said.
Earlier on Saturday, the Health Minister also said that India has the “best” Covid-19 recovery rate of about 75 per cent, which is improving every day, and the “lowest” mortality rate of 1.87 per cent in the world.
He said India began formulating its strategy against coronavirus from January 8 as soon as the world came to know about the outbreak of the disease.
Dr Harsh Vardhan said “many intelligent people, scientists and naysayers” had estimated that India, with a population of about 135 crore, will see 300 million Covid-19 cases and about 5-6 million people will die by July-August, and the country’s healthcare system was “incapable” to combat the disease.
“However, I am happy to say that in the eighth month of the battle, India has the best recovery rate of 75 per cent and against an estimate of 300 million affected we have not even reached 3 million cases.”
“In fact, 2.2 million patients have recovered and gone home and another seven lakh are going to be cured very soon,” he said.
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