AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria on Wednesday received the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine shot and explained the availability of the vaccine in the open market. He said, "Vaccine will be available in the open market only when the prime targets, people to be vaccinated, are covered and there's an equivalence of supply and demand."
The AIIMS Director stated that it should happen by year-end or before that. Guleria also added, "Hopefully there'd be such situation by year-end or before that. Then there would be the likelihood of vaccine to come to the open market."
In January, the noted pulmonologist had said that the people who have contracted coronavirus should also get the jab about 4-6 weeks after recovery. Guleria had also allayed apprehensions about the coronavirus vaccines and assured that the side-effects will not result in the death of the beneficiary.
The AIIMS Director had said that people must come forth to get vaccinated if they want India to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, decrease the mortality rate, bring the economy back on track and reopen schools. He had said that a nasal COVID-19 vaccine will be easy to give to school-going children who bear a "very mild" load of the disease but they are infectious.
Once children start going to the school regularly and they contract the COVID-19 infection, they will not have much problem but if they bring it home they can spread it to their parents or grandparents, the chief of the premier Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) had said.
He had said that densely populated countries like India "provide an opportunity" for the outbreak of infectious disease emergencies as it is coupled with the phenomenon of crowding and urbanisation. He batted for having a "very good surveillance system" to better combat coronavirus like diseases and epidemics. He said the country did "aggressive" work with a strong political will in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak and said the need of the hour was to have lab-based surveillance and more and more trained public health officials.
