The research conducted by Credit Suisse tells an estimate that India needs about 1.7 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses to vaccinate most of its adult population. It targets to administer 400-500 million doses by July 2021. "The key vaccines India is banking on are from Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax and J&J (temperature range is 2-8-degree Celsius) and the earliest efficacy data is expected by the end of November-December and in the best case, vaccines can be rolled out in January 2021," the report said.
The company said sufficient capacity for vaccine manufacturing (more than 2.4 billion doses) including the various components like vials, stoppers, syringes, gauze, alcohol swabs, etc.are available. The critical requirement is cold storage infrastructure (especially the refrigerated vans) and the cold chain infrastructure of the private sector (250-300 million doses), current immunisation programme (600 million doses), potential vaccinations can reach 550-600 million doses annually.
The manpower requirement for administering the vaccine will be less than 1 lakh. India is keying on Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax, and J&J vaccines as the temperature range of these vaccines is about 2-8-degree Celsius (vs -20-degree Celsius for Moderna and -70-degree Celsius for Pfizer). The key challenge is in preparing the list of people with comorbidities, where the data is currently limited to screening of people at 48,000 health centers.
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