Vaccine
India has disclosed that it would have a vaccine against the coronavirus disease by early 2020 in order to protect its citizens from further attacks of the virus
Indian Health and Family Welfare Minister, Harsh Vardhan made the disclosure on Thursday in a statement to the Parliament where he mentioned that India was developing its own vaccine. He said: “We are expecting that our country will have COVID vaccine by the early next year.
“India is also making effective efforts for vaccines just like other countries.
“In India, among the candidate vaccines, three have reached phase one, phase two and phase three stages.
“An expert group under the guidance of Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) is looking at it and we have advanced planning in place.”
Indian pharmaceutical companies, Bharat Biotech, Serum Institute, Zydus Cadila, Panacea Biotec, Indian Immunologicals, Mynvax and Biological E are among the domestic firms that are developing the COVID-19 vaccine and some of them have already entered the phase 3 trials.
The South Asian nation expects to receive 100 million doses of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V by the end of the year.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund confirmed on Wednesday that it had reached an agreement on vaccine supply with India’s Dr. Reddy’s.
India ranks second in terms of the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, following the United States, having a total of over 5.12 million cases.