Vardhan was quoted as having said this during a meeting of the Group of Ministers in New Delhi.

“We’re expecting that early next year; we should have vaccine in the country from maybe more than one source.”

“Our expert groups are already formulating and devising strategies to plan on how to roll out the distribution of the vaccines in the country, who do we give the vaccine first and then, of course, we are strengthening the cold chain facilities,” Vardhan said.

The ministry said in August that about 30 COVID-19 candidate vaccines were under various stages of development in the country and of them, three were in the advanced stage.

Vardhan has also said previously that the COVID-19 vaccine was likely to be available in India by the first quarter of 2021.

On Sunday, the minister said that considering the large population of India, one vaccine or vaccine manufacturer will not be able to meet the requirements of vaccinating the whole country.

“Therefore, we are open to assessing the feasibility of introducing several COVID-19 vaccines in the country as per their availability for the Indian population,” he said.

On Tuesday morning 55,342 new COVID-19 cases and 706 related deaths were recorded in the country during the past 24 hours, pushing the country’s COVID-19 tally to 7,175,880 including 109,856 deaths. (NAN)