NEW DELHI: Covid-19 vaccine would be ready by the next year and India should start planning on how to procure around 60 crore doses that it would require for its population, Harvard Global Health Institute chief Ashish Jha said during an interaction with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
“Three vaccine candidates currently under development are showing promise. One is a US vaccine, the other Chinese and the third is an Oxford vaccine. I do not know which one will work may be all will or may be one. But I am very confident that a vaccine will be ready by the next year. So India has to have a plan looking at how much vaccination would be available once it becomes possible,” Jha said.
India needs to ramp up testing capacity, he said. “I am not convinced that India couldn’t do much more testing than it does right now. I don’t know why it couldn’t. It is moving forward, they’ve been doing 80,000-100,000 tests a day now. That is good, that is real progress. If we can get up to that level of capacity, then we can test migrant workers before they get out,” he added.