India plays crucial role in Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing: ICMR-India News

India’s top medical research institute said Tuesday that India would play a key role in expanding production of Covid-19 vaccines developed elsewhere in the world, citing the size of the domestic pharmaceutical industry and Expressed expectations. Ready to spawn successful candidates.

This comment came a few weeks after the Indian Medical Research Council (ICMR) seemed to rush the trial process for one of the two Indian vaccines by setting a launch deadline of 15 August. It was To speed up the regulatory approval process rather than having a tight timeline.

“India is well known as a world pharmacy and supplies 60% of the world’s vaccines in Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia,” said Balram Bhargava, head of ICMR. This means that vaccine candidates manufactured or developed somewhere in the world will eventually have to be scaled up in India or China, and some developed countries have been Keep in touch with the organization.

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Bhargava said the two vaccines made in India are being tested in 1,000 volunteers each, with a focus on relaxing regulatory deregulation of the process without compromising scientific or ethical parameters. .. “Two indigenous vaccine candidates have gone through successful virulence studies in rates, mice and rabbits, and their data have been submitted to the Indian Drug Controller Secretary, after which both of these candidate vaccines were released in humans earlier this month. I got the approval to start the initial trials,” he said.

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Among these are Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, who received a Nodding Drug Enforcement Officer in India on June 29 for a human trial. On July 2, a letter sent from Bhargava to a hospital where vaccine trials will be conducted says, “We plan to launch a vaccine for public health by August 15, 2020, after completion of all clinical trials.” I am. The ICMR criticized for setting an unrealistic timeline that compromised the safety of the vaccine, and later reverted and said it would follow international clinical trial protocols.

Another vaccine candidate comes from Zydus Cadila, called ZyCov-D, which received approval for a drug controller for human trials on July 2. It was independently developed at the company’s Vaccine Technology Center in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

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“They are preparing their site, and they are doing clinical research on about 1,000 volunteers at different sites. There are 6 and 12 people. We are also trying early clinical trials.In addition, there are pre-clinical trials of other vaccines being conducted at the National Virology Institute in Pune, and it is our moral duty to develop these vaccines as soon as possible. So I am working day and night to carry out these experiments,” Bhargaba said.

Worldwide, the fastest-growing vaccine candidates are from Russia, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom. “We are making every effort to accelerate the development of vaccines. It is moral to ensure that the regulatory clearance of these vaccines is not delayed by as much as a day so that we can block the virus’ infection as soon as possible. It’s an obligation, and it could be,” Bhargava said.

In a previous interview with HT, Dr. VK Paul, a member of Niti Ayog, said India would take the lead in producing the Covid-19 vaccine developed.

Experts also say that it is the vaccine that ultimately provides the key to break the infection cycle. “Vaccines will be the ultimate for checking the spread of the disease, but efforts are being made to achieve it as soon as possible, even though all vaccines are effective. Lucknow’s KGMU microbiology Dr. Amitageine, head of department, said:

Bhargaba was speaking at a briefing organized by the Union Government on Tuesday.