Status of various candidate vaccines for Covid-19 presented before govt: Health Ministry

The domestic pharma giants on Monday presented the current status of various candidate vaccines for COVID-19 to the central government.

According to the health ministry, the National Expert Group on Covid-19 Vaccine Administration on Monday met with leading domestic vaccine manufacturers: Serum Institute of India, Pune; Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad; Zydus Cadila, Ahmedabad; Gennova Biopharmaceuticals, Pune; and Biological E, Hyderabad.

The meeting was mutually beneficial and productive, the health ministry said.

"It provided the National Expert Group with inputs about the present stage of various candidate vaccines being developed by the indigenous manufacturers as well as their expectations from the Union government."

The meeting was held to consider the logistics, ethical aspects of procurement and administration of COVID19 vaccine. The Central government has constituted a committee under the chairmanship of Dr VK Paul, member (health) at Niti Aayog for this purpose.

Recently, Rajesh Bhushan, union health secretary had said, "The terms of reference of this expert committee are to streamline suitable vaccine selection, how procurement of vaccine will be done, how vaccine would be delivered, prioritising groups to whom vaccine has to be administered,"

"Other issues are related to logistics of the vaccine like--cold chain, inventory etc, how to arrange resources to procure vaccine and how to address the equity issues linked to vaccination. This experts group will hold discussions with all state governments and vaccine manufacturers."

It may be noted that three Covid vaccine candidates in India are in different phases of clinical study.

The first is the inactivated virus vaccine which is the Bharat Biotech Vaccine being developed in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Similarly, the second is the DNA vaccine of pharma giant Zydus Cadila.

The third, is a recombinant Oxford University vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India (SII) which got approval from DCGI to conduct phase 2, 3 clinical study in the nation.

( With inputs from ANI )