COVID-19 Vaccine By Mid-2021: India Needs Digital Backbone For Efficient Distribution, Says Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Bengaluru: India could have a vaccine by June 2021 but the delivery process will be challenging, managing director of Bengaluru-based Biocon Ltd Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw told LiveMint in an interview.

“If we finish the clinical trials in the next 2-3 months, even those may be approved by January-February. So, I would expect that in Q1 2021-22 we should have vaccines available in India,” she was quoted as saying by the daily.

“My expectation is that the first mRNA vaccines will be approved by the end of the year. But they are not going to be available in India because they require a -80 degree cold chain and that is not something which we can handle here. You need a digital backbone to do all this very efficiently. You need to track the durability of the two doses to have data on-chain traceability and trackability,” she added.