“And that’s something that, unfortunately, has not been accomplished. Often when you have diseases in which there is a limited amount of intervention, be it therapeutic or prevention, this is something that all the countries that are relatively rich countries or countries that have a higher income have to pay more attention to,” the 80-year-old immunologist was quoted by The Guardian as saying.

The Health system didn’t have the resources to deal with the overwhelming number of patients within a short period. Several hospitals have been frequently sending out distress messages on social media to flag the acute shortage of oxygen supply. The Centre has now taken a series of steps to overcome the shortage. India has recorded 3,60,960 new Covid-19 cases and 3,293 related deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the ministry of health and family welfare.

Apart from this he also recognised the efficacy of the Indian vaccines. Covaxin, India's home-grown COVID-19 vaccine, has been found to neutralise the 617 variant of the deadly virus, White House chief medical adviser and America's top pandemic expert Dr Anthony Fauci said in Washington.

"This is something where we're still gaining data on a daily basis. But the most recent data, was looking at convalescent Sera of COVID-19 cases and people who received the vaccine used in India, the Covaxin. It was found to neutralise the 617 variants," he said.

"So, despite the real difficulty that we're seeing in India, vaccination could be a very, very important antidote against this," Fauci said.

Developed by Bharat Biotic in partnership with National Institute of Virology and the Indian Council of Medical Research, Covaxin was approved for emergency use on January 3. Trial results later showed the vaccine has an efficacy of 78 per cent.