'If you delay the diagnosis even by 24 hours, in that 24 hours individuals would have affected more people.' 'So, contact tracing, testing, isolation, quarantine needs to continue.'

'If people are not cooperating and do not follow policies laid down by the government or follow scientific infection control management, then all will be lost.'

'Prevention plus vaccination is what is going to take us into better territory by September or October.'

'At the stage where we are in today in the country, by the time mass vaccination becomes available, it would be around the middle of next year.' 'Most of those people, who got infected this year, will be next year back to level zero -- once again susceptible.'

'It is absolutely important for us to continue to message to people that they must wear masks, keep physical distancing, as much as is practically possible, at work or at home.'

'But we still have to be very careful.'

'Whenever you roll out: effectiveness is important, operational logistics are important, side effects are important and vaccine hesitancy is important.'

On a visit to India in 2013, writer Ved Mehta -- who passed into the ages on Sunday January 10, 2021 - gave Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel a rare glimpse into his state of mind and what he thinks of the changes he encounters in his motherland.

'What proportion of the people require the vaccine for us to manage this entire COVID-19 situation?'

'Rolling out the vaccine is not a major challenge in India.'

'We were lucky, in many ways, that we got the disease late.'

'Essentially there are three things the government should be doing: Identify who you are going to get your vaccine from, figure out how you are going to pay for it, and figure out how you're going to deliver it and to whom.'

'There were any number of Congress leaders who disliked Sonia Gandhi, but they were very close to Ahmed Bhai and he would listen, and give a shoulder to cry upon.'

'The larger number of patients, who are being affected by COVID-19, are essentially people who have a history of heart disease to begin with, and then experience a more severe form of the infection with COVID-19, because of the existing risk factor.'

'The more seriously ill you are from heart disease, the more seriously ill you could get from infection with COVID-19.'

'He always avoided eating non-vegetarian food in presence of his deputies if they were fasting for the month of Shravan.' 'There were no Hindu, Jain, Parsi and Swaminarayan festivals he would forget.' 'He was a conservative Muslim and therefore could get along well with conservative Hindus.'

'The COVID-19 virus has the power to quietly enter your body, without causing pain via symptoms, because it craftily manipulates your pain response.'

'If our body is able to mount a very successful immune response, we can negate the virus.'

'The most intriguing thing (about COVID-19) is the range of the illness -- from asymptomatic or less symptoms to death and quite severe manifestations.' 'The vaccine will be at least another year away from having any effect.'

'Some of the longer-term implications of COVID-19 are not related to the virus itself.' 'They are actually related to immune responses from the virus.'