In a good news for millions of Indians, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said that vaccine against coronavirus COVID-19 is expected in India by early 2021. The Union minister added that experts are currently busy chalking out plans on how to roll out the distribution of the vaccine in the country.

“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”, said Harsh Vardhan during Group of Ministers meeting

Harsh Vardhan made the statement at a time when India’s COVID-19 caseload surpassed 71 lakh-mark. As per the Ministry of Health data released on Tuesday, the coronavirus cases in India stands at 71,75,881 including 8,38,729 active cases, 62,27,296 cured/discharged/migrated cases & 1,09,856 deaths.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus cases in India recorded its lowest number on Tuesday (October 13, 2020) after a period of nearly two months. The number of positive cases recorded in the last 24 hours stands at 55,342. In the fast few weeks India was consistently recording cases above 70,000 mark. 

India recorded around 55,000 cases on July 31 (55,078), August 4 (52,050) and August 18 (55,079). India is showing a trend of declining average daily cases over the past five weeks. On October 9, active cases fell below the 9 lakh mark and the number of fresh cases has been declining ever since.

Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit with a total of 15,35,315 cases including 40,514 deaths; followed by Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

Total number of samples tested up to October 12 is 8,89,45,107 including 10,73,014 samples tested on Monday alone as per the Indian Council of Medical Research report.