This year, the Coronavirus pandemic has taken several lives and caused economies to come to a halt.
With the Coronavirus continuing to disrupt daily life and inhibiting progress, the research and clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine are being conducted rapidly.
Acquisition talks with global pharmacy giants
At the top of their game are UK’s Oxford-AstraZeneca and United States’ Moderna-NIAID developing Covid-19 vaccines, awaited worldwide.
India is looking forward to holding acquisition discussions with these organizations and is working towards a meeting with these pharmaceutical company heads.
Currently, India is awaiting the Russian vaccine’s trial data, which was declared last week to be the first approved coronavirus vaccine in the world. Apart from this, India is also closely looking at the vaccine development programs conducted in Israel and Germany.
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Indigenous production of covid-19 vaccine and clinical trials
In the interim, the government is also tracking the progress in clinical trials made by Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila. Serum Institute of India has signed a clinical trial and production deal with AstraZeneca for the AZD 1222 vaccine that is one of the highest tested vaccines globally so far.
Niti Aayog’s VK Paul and Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan will be holding meetings with heads of top pharma companies to discuss the details of procurement processes and pricing of the vaccines.
As per the Bharat Biotech vaccine Covaxin trials, there is currently a steady process in all the 12 locations where test shots have been administered on people.
Simultaneously, Zydus Cadila initiated its Phase 2 clinical trials in August to determine its vaccine ZyCov-D’s efficiency.
[Also Read: ‘ICMR Notice Misinterpreted, Can’t Give Timelines COVID-19 Vaccine’]
Waiting period – Importance of covid-19 testing increases
States have a waiting period until the next three months and the focus until then should be primarily on 3T’s – test, trace, and treat to contain the virus.
Dr. Amita Jain, head of the microbiology department, KGMU, Lucknow said, “A vaccine will be needed to check the disease spread but we don’t know when an effective vaccine be available for use even though all our efforts are being directed towards making it happen as soon as possible. A good vaccine is the most cost-effective way of preventing a disease.”
