Harsh Vardhan: India to have more than one Covid-19 vaccine by early next year

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, on Tuesday, during Group of Ministers meeting said that India will have a vaccine for COVID-19 from maybe more than one source by early next year.

ANI tweeted, "We're expecting that early next year we should have vaccine in the country from maybe more than one source. Our expert groups are formulating strategies to plan on how to roll out the distribution of the vaccine in the country."

With a spike of 55,342 new cases and 706 deaths in the last 24 hours, India's Covid-19 tally reached 71,75,881 today, according to the data released by Union Health Ministry. 

Meanwhile, US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson announced that it has temporarily paused its Covid-19 vaccine trial after a participant became unwell.

"We have temporarily paused further dosing in all our Covid-19 vaccine candidate clinical trials, including the Phase 3 ENSEMBLE trial, due to an unexplained illness in a study participant," Xinhua news agency quoted the company as saying in a statement on Monday.