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With vaccine roll out on the cards after Drugs Controller General of India's (DCGI) approval, the country needs to tackle public and administrative challenges to have a smooth vaccination roll-out, said Randeep Guleria, Director, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Sunday.
"The challenges are going to be both from the administration point of view and public point of view. From the administration, the challenge is to ensure that things run smoothly, and from point of view of public the challenge is to reassure them that this is a safe and effective vaccine," said Dr Guleria. He said that country has established a cold chain, which is being maintained and enough doses are delivered to all locations. "The vaccinators are there to vaccinate and this has to be done twice. The ultimate challenge is to do the entire process without any glitch," he observed. Dr Guleria addressed the rumours and infodemic doing rounds in social media and said the public should not get worried about them. "People should have faith in scientists and regulatory authorities. They should come forward and get themselves vaccinated because this is the only way we can decrease the death rate and get over the pandemic," he stated further. The AIIMS Director also observed that vaccination will provide 70 per cent to 80 per cent immunity, which can help in breaking the chain and help in ending the pandemic. "With 70 per cent to 80 per cent immunity the chain of transmission can be broken. This is important because the virus would not travel straight from one person to another, hence the number of cases would decline dramatically and that would really see the end of the pandemic," he added. Dr Guleria, who is a member of the national task force on Covid-19 management further added that the aim is to decrease mortality by vaccinating the high-risk group and then start vaccinating enough people so that a good amount of people have immunity (which can be either vaccine-related immunity or infection they have received). Earlier today, COVID-19 vaccines of Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech were granted permission for restricted use in an emergency situation by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI). (ANI)
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