AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria: COVID Won’t Vanish; No Vaccine For Common People Till 2022

New Delhi: AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria has said that common people will have to wait till 2022 for a shot of the coronavirus vaccine. He said it will take “more than a year” for a coronavirus vaccine to be easily available in the Indian markets.

“In our country the population is large; we need time to see how the vaccine can be bought from the market like a flu vaccine and take it. That will actually be the ideal situation,” Randeep Guleria told CNN-News 18 in an interview, India Today reported.

“Maintaining the cold chain, having adequate syringes, adequate needles and being able to deliver it to the remotest part of the country in a seamless manner is the biggest challenge for India,” he told CNN-News 18.

The second challenge, Dr Randeep Guleria said, would be to figure out the positioning of another vaccine that comes out later and is seen as more effective than the first one.

“So if we have a vaccine that comes out later and is seen to be more effective than the first one, how do we position it? How do we do a course correction? How to then decide who needs vaccine A and who needs vaccine B? A lot of decisions need to be taken as we go along,” AIIMS director said.

Randeep Guleria also asserted that the coronavirus infection “will not vanish” with vaccination, the report stated.