Indian Firm In Collaboration With Oxford University States Coronavirus Vaccine May See The Light of Day By September

COVID Vaccine is on its way...

Tuesday, 28th April 2020

Serum Institute of India, in conjunction with scientists in the UK and US are working in full swing towards the development of a coronavirus vaccine and may be available in the market as early as September this year, as per the chief of the Pune based institute.

Adar Poonawalla who heads the world’s largest maker of vaccines told in his statement to the press that they are aiming towards commencing the production of the vaccine by the end of next month. This is so as to have enough vaccines in stock by the time the trials come to an end in September and not have to wait a further six months for production to complete.

He also gave a cost estimate of around Rs.1000 for each vaccine, although he also added that it might be a little too early to be putting an exact figure to it. The amount has been approached at having taken into account the fact several other projects have taken a back seat, now with all focus on the creation of this one.

Most other scientists however give a completely different picture and suggest that it will take a minimum of eighteen months if not two full years, for a vaccine to come to the forefront.

To this the chief of Serum Institute stated that they too were looking at a prolonged incubation period till the time they got into an agreement with Oxford University, which was around one week back. The British institute has already made a big headway and started with human trials since April 23. Earlier, he said, they were not hoping for anything till before next year, when they were working with just firms in the United States such as Codagenix. They are conducting animal trials at the moment and making use of a live enervated virus for making the vaccine, as per Poonawalla, and have fallen back by several months to Oxford.

As per the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and international news bodies, more than a hundred bodies across the world are vying for the creation of a vaccine for the Covid-19 that has the entire population on the world on tenterhooks. Clinical trials also have started for several of them, some of which are located in the US and China.

The Oxford team has been known to come up with such high end vaccines as the one for the deadly Ebola virus.

Source: NDTV