India at the forefront of vaccine development for COVID: Centre

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 28

The Centre on Thursday said India was at the forefront of vaccine development for COVID with 14 candidates under development and six of them promising.

Principal Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister K Vijay Raghavan also cautioned that a COVID vaccine once ready would not be a “switch available to all”.

“Distribution of the COVID vaccine, whenever it is ready, would be a challenge. Logistics of making the vaccine available and priority groups are now being discussed,” said Raghavan.

Eight vaccines are being led by Indian industry, including the Serum Institute, Bharat Biotech, Cadila and Biological E, while national scientific labs under ICMR, Biotechnology and Council for Industrial and Scientific Research are working on six vaccine candidates and two are promising.

“We are also working to augment local testing capacity and by July we will make 5 lakh test kits through 20 manufacturers locally,” said NITI Aayog member VK Paul.

The government experts also said India was working on several drugs against COVID, including anti-viral faviparavir, Phyto Pharma based drug ACHQ, anti-arthritis drug itolizumab, and trials were on to see if another dose of BCG vaccine have better protection against COVID after some observational studies had indicated lesser mortality from COVID among those who have taken anti-TB BCG vaccine earlier in life.

A trial on mycobacterium w drug is underway at PGI Chandigarh and AIIMS Bhopal and New Delhi, so are studies on convalescent plasma therapy and remdesivir.

“We are in the frontlines of testing drug molecules against COVID,” Paul said, inviting scientists, start-ups and industry to share any scientific solution ideas with the office of the Scientific Advisor or with NITI Aayog.