“Pandemic is not over, we will continue to deal with uncertainty, even though we hope that we are possibly moving in the direction of endemicity, hopefully of a mild disease, that we can tackle,” Paul said but cautioned that the situation cannot be taken for granted.The endemic stage is when a population learns to live with a virus. It is very different from the epidemic stage when the virus overwhelms a population.While noting that the contribution of the industry to science is low in the country, Paul said, “Our national investment in science is all public money… even during developing the vaccines, a lot of testing was done at the national laboratory”.Further, he said that 97 per cent of the vaccines delivered to Indian people was with public money and very little with private money.The foremost priority right now is to make sure that there is universal coverage of the vaccine and no one is left behind, Paul said, adding that globally, there are 3.6 billion people who are not vaccinated.”We need 7.2 billion doses together, and with the current rate of production, it is well within our grasp… it is possible for us to deliver the vaccine,” Paul said.
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