New Delhi: India may have a choice of three or four coronavirus vaccines in a few weeks and people can probably pick which one to take, according to the chief of Delhi’s premier All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Dr Randeep Guleria.
The possibility of choosing a vaccine is more so with the government expanding the inoculation drive and allowing beneficiaries to choose their vaccination centres from Monday.
“In a few weeks from now, we may have three or four vaccines. You can’t have all of them available in one centre. One centre will be giving only one vaccine. But it is likely that in your area you may have more than one vaccine provided in different private hospitals and therefore it may indirectly give you some choice because you would know which vaccine is being given at which centre. But you can’t go to a site and ask for one vaccine or the other,” Dr Guleria told NDTV on Saturday.
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The AIIMS chief said India needed to urgently ramp up vaccination with cases rising in six states.
“If we look at the number of people we have vaccinated, it’s large. But if we look at it on a percentage basis, it’s very low because of the population of our country and therefore we have to look at a strategy where we can increase it exponentially. I think that is what is going to happen if we open it up to the private sector,” he said.
“If we can vaccinate a large number of people, we will not only be able to bring down the cases. However in those who are most susceptible, we can bring down the hospitalisation and death rate,” he added.
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