On November 19, 2020, Adar Poonawala, CEO of Serum Institute of India, a pharma company that is making vaccines for coronaviruses in India, said that the Covid-19 Oxford vaccine could be on the market by April 2021 for health workers and the elderly.
Along with this, CEO Adar Poonawala said that the Corona vaccine may be available to the public in the next 4 to 5 months. He said that the cost of two doses required to the public will be maximum of one thousand rupees but it will depend on the final results of the test and the approval of the regulator.
Every Indian will get vaccinated by 2024
Explaining the price of the vaccine, CEO Adar Poonawala said that based on the results of the final test and regulatory approval, the general public would have to pay a maximum of Rs 1,000 for the two required doses. He said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit (HTLS) 2020 that probably by 2024 every Indian would have been vaccinated.
He said that it will take two or three years to vaccinate every person in India, not only because of the shortage in supply but because you need the budget, vaccines, equipment, infrastructure and then persuade people to get vaccinated. It should be and these are the factors that require 80-90 percent of the entire population to be vaccinated.
Poonawala said that this vaccine works well on ‘T cell’, which is considered essential for long term immunity and antibody response. However, only time will tell how long this vaccine will give protection. The Covid-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University is also effective in significantly improving the immunity of people in the age group 56-69 and the elderly over 70 years.
Poonawala said that the children will have to wait a bit till the safety data comes, but the good news is that Corona is not more dangerous for them. The Oxford Vaccine is inexpensive and safe. He said that it would require a temperature of two to eight degrees Celsius to store it, which is the ideal temperature for cold storage in India.
