Harsh Vardhan says one of the COVID-19 vaccine candidates is in the third phase of the clinical trial. (File)
Ghaziabad:
Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said on Saturday India’s first vaccine against the novel coronavirus could be available by the end of this year.
“One of our COVID-19 vaccine candidates is in the third phase of the clinical trial. We are very confident that a vaccine will be developed by the end of this year, ”said Dr Harsh Vardhan at the inauguration of a makeshift 10-bed NDRF hospital in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh.
He said: “I am happy to say that in the eighth month of the battle India has the best cure rate of 75%. In total 2.2 million patients have recovered and returned home and seven more lakh are going to be very healed soon. “
“We started with a single testing lab in Pune, but we have expanded our diagnostic capabilities and strengthened our testing capacity. Today India has 1,500 testing labs for COVID-19 and on Friday we tested over a million samples, ”added the minister.
India recorded the highest ever single-day peak on Saturday of 63,631 recoveries from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, recoveries exceed active cases by more than 15 lakh and cure rate soars at 74.69%, said the Department of Health and Family Welfare.
