AMID the second wave of COVID-19, AIIMS Delhi Director Randeep Guleria on Saturday said that the country is preparing to ramp up the vaccination drive as more vaccines shall be available in India in the next two months. While briefing the nation jointly on the vaccination plan ahead along with Medanta Chairman Naresh Tehran, Dr Guleria stated that the elderly should be vaccinated at the earliest, looking at their comorbidities and their high mortality rate. “Vaccines will be available in large amount probably in about 2 months’ time as companies that are making vaccines will start opening up their manufacturing plants, there will be more vaccine doses available. We are hopeful that we will also get approval for the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.

 

We will have more vaccines from different companies available in our country in the coming six to eight weeks.” “I still believe that looking at comorbidities and chance of dying due to COVID-19 is much higher in those with comorbidities and elderly, we should focus on trying to vaccinate them at the earliest and also look at the larger population who can be vaccinated in a graded manner,” he said. The AIIMS chief pointed out everyone will not be able to be vaccinated in a day or two or a month and called for developing a strategy where appointments for vaccination could be given two, three or four months later for the younger age group.

 

“One of the basic weapons we have to really conquer this pandemic is vaccination. The three main pillars that we are working on currently are COVID appropriate behaviour, aggressive management strategies so that we can save lives and a very fast roll-out as far as vaccination is concerned. All three of these will help us control the pandemic and save lives. Vaccination plays a very important role as far as preventing COVID-19 is concerned.” Explaining why the duration of second dose of Covishield was increased up to 12 weeks, Dr Gueria said: “When there was this huge surge in the UK in November-December last year, they took a calculated risk and decided to extend the second dose duration up to 12 weeks. That seemed to have worked and this was seen as a successful strategy as far as both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines are concerned because they were able to vaccinate more number of people.”