Common people have to wait till 2022 to get COVID-19 vaccine: AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the world, Dr Randeep Guleria, director of AIIMS and member of the national task force on Covid-19 management, explained the scenario in the country, the challenges that lie ahead, treatment mechanism and when the vaccine would be available to the common public.

In an exclusive interview with CNN-News18, Dr Guleria said that different parts of the country will behave differently towards the Coronavirus infection and peaks across the country can’t be generalized. “We have had a peak in Mumbai and Maharashtra early on and now there is a decline in cases there. This will continue to happen. As far as Delhi is concerned, we can't say that the peak was over for us to say there is a third peak. It had not come down to the levels for us to say that the second peak was over. Delhi is seeing an escalation of the ongoing second peak. It is premature to say that this is the third peak in Delhi,” he said.

As for rural India, he said there the crowding is not that much, so there is physical distancing. A surge in cases in rural India may not happen at such a rapid pace as it happened in cities.

However, he reiterated the importance of maintaining social distancing and wearing masks. “One person not taking the precautions can lead to a superspreading event,” he said.

Talking about the spike in the number of cases in Delhi, Dr Guleria told the media house that there are several factors contributing to the increase in cases. “One is the weather. We know that respiratory viruses spike in the winter months; we have seen a drop in temperature in Delhi. There are higher chances of the virus surviving in outdoor air and people tend to crowd indoors during winters. The third factor is air pollution which is also contributing to the spike,” he said.

He also told the media house that for normal people, getting themselves vaccinated will take more than a year. “In our country the population is large; we need time to see how the vaccine can be bought from the market like a flu vaccine and take it. That will actually be the ideal situation. So it could be the end of 2021 to the beginning of 2022.”