On coronavirus vaccine in India, AIIMS Director hopeful of emergency use approval by December-end

With Covid-19 vaccines in the final stages of testing in India and the government working on a vaccine distribution plan, AIIMS Director is hopeful of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of this month or early January.

“In India, we now have vaccines which are in their final trial stage. Hopeful that by the end of this month or early next month we should get emergency use authorisation from Indian regulatory authorities to start giving vaccine to public,” Dr Randeep Guleria, Director, AIIMS Delhi said on Thursday.

The AIIMS Director said work on a Covid-19 vaccine is going on war-footing both at Centre and state-level for vaccine distribution plan in terms of maintaining cold chain, having appropriate storehouses available, developing strategy, training vaccinators and availability of syringes.

Speaking on the impact on vaccine during Chennai trial, Director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Dr Randeep Guleria told that the case is an incidental finding rather than related to the vaccine candidate.

“As per the information available in the public domain, the Chennai trial case is an incidental finding rather than related to the vaccine. When we vaccinate a large number of people, some of them may have some other disease, which may not be related to the vaccine,” Dr Randeep Guleria said.

Talking about the safety of the vaccines Dr Guleria said there are data which supports that in short term vaccine is safe.
“There is good data available that the vaccines are very safe. Safety and efficacy of vaccine not compromised at all. About 70,000-80,000 volunteers were given the vaccine and no significant serious adverse effects seen. Data shows that in the short term vaccine is safe,” the AIIMS director said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)