Common people in India would get coronavirus vaccine shots by 2022

New Delhi : AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria has said that the coronavirus vaccine will take time to reach the common people of India; in fact the people may have to wait till 2022 for the vaccine. He also asserted that it will take ‘more than a year’ for the Indian markets to get an authentic vaccine against the novel coronavirus.

In an exclusive interview with CNN-News18, Mr Guleria said, "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. So it could be the end of 2021 to the beginning of 2022."

He also spoke about the sudden spike in coronavirus cases especially in Delhi.

"One is the weather. We know that respiratory viruses spike in the winter months; we have seen a drop in temperature in Delhi. There are higher chances of the virus surviving in outdoor air and people tend to crowd indoors during winters. The third factor is air pollution which is also contributing to the spike," he elaborated.

India's caseload of coronavirus has been showing improvement these days as the total number of cases are around 85 lakhs and the number of recoveries are 78,68,968 pushing the national recovery rate to 92.49 per cent, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Sunday.