India should be able to fully vaccinate 60 crore people against COVID-19 by December: Dr Trehan

Medanta Hospitals chairman Dr Naresh Trehan has said that India should be able to fully vaccinate 60 crore people against COVID-19 by December. He said the gap for the second dose of vaccine was increased to 12 weeks and India also adopted that but they have now compressed time back to eight weeks due to the new variant of virus.

New Delhi: Medanta Hospitals chairman Dr Naresh Trehan has said that many new coronavirus vaccines are coming to India and the shortage of the doses are likely to be over by July-August.

He said the country should be able to vaccinate 60 crore people with both doses of COVID-19 vaccine by December.

"We're the manufacturing hub of vaccines. Already seven-eight crore of doses are available per month but it needs to be ramped up. Because our population is too large it needs 60-70 crore people to be vaccinated before we can say we've reached herd immunity," he said.

"If you're exposed between two doses, it's better to do it around six weeks, eight weeks maximum to get full immunity. There're many new vaccines coming and we're hoping by July-August there will l be no shortage. By year-end before December we should be able to vaccinate 60 crore people with both doses," he added.

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He said the gap for the second dose of vaccine was increased to 12 weeks and India also adopted that but they have now compressed time back to eight weeks due to new variant of virus.

"In the UK, they said that you can increase the gap between two doses to 12 weeks and India also adopted that. But now it is discovered in the UK that (against) new B.1.617 mutation one dose is not enough and they have now compressed the time back to eight weeks," he said.

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Union Health Ministry has said that India has become the second country after the US to cross 20 crore cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage and 42 per cent population above 60 years have received their first dose of the vaccine.

(ANI)