COVID-19: Entire Indian Population May Not Need Vaccinating, Says Health Ministry

India may not need to vaccinate all of its 1.3 billion people. Union Health Ministry says India needs to inoculate a critical mass to break the transmission of the coronavirus. Speaking to the media, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said the government had never spoken about inoculating the entire population with COVID-19 vaccine. He added that only the critical mass of people would be administered the vaccine to break the transmission.

In an interaction with the media when asked about vaccinating the entire country and the time taken to for completing the process. Rajesh Bhushan said, “I just want to make this clear that the govt has never spoken about vaccinating the entire country. It’s important that we discuss such scientific issues, based on factual information only.”

ICMR DG Dr Balram Bhargava added, “Vaccination would depend on the efficacy of the vaccine and our purpose is to break the chain of Covid-19 transmission. If we’re able to vaccinate the critical mass of people and break virus transmission, then we may not have to vaccinate the entire population.”

This comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in October that the government was preparing to reach every single citizen as soon as a vaccine was ready.

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India currently has the world’s second-highest number of coronavirus infections. The Nation stands just behind the United States. The country’s total cases stand at 94,62,810 on Tuesday.

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