India is going to play a key role in producing Covid 19 vaccine

Second meeting to be held today

Monday, 17th August 2020

The National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration is going to organize a meeting today to for reviewing the particulars of Covid-19 vaccine procurement operations as well as cost with the heads of pharmaceutical firms like Bharat Biotech, SII and Zydus Cadila.

Oxford-AstraZeneca of the UK and Moderna-NIAID of the US are developing vaccines for coronavirus and India is considering them as top candidates for potential procurement discussions. There is going to be a meeting today arranged by the experts and pharma firms’ heads.

Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila have been testing the candidates and the development is being monitored by the government.

“For now, we are looking at the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is in co-production with Serum Institute of India for the Indian market, and the Moderna vaccine, which has also entered phase 3 trails”, said an official. He added that India is also considering 9 other vaccine development programmes which were discussed about in the meetings held previously at top government levels.

The meeting will take place at 3:30 pm co-chaired by Rajesh Bhushan, Union health secretary and headed by Niti Aayog’s VK Paul, the health ministry announced. The meeting might be attended by Serum Institute of India’s CEO Adar C Poonawalla, Bharat Biotech’s MD Krishna Ella and chairman of Zydus Cadila.

Panel members are ‘department of biotechnology secretary, Renu Swarup, director general, Indian Council of Medical Research, Dr Balram Bhargava and department of pharmaceuticals secretary, PD Vaghela’ (Hindustan Times).

Source: Hindustan Times