Indian health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said over four Covid-19 vaccine candidates are in advanced stages of pre-clinical trials in the country. Speaking in the Parliament, he said the government is giving all necessary support for the development of a vaccine against the disease in the country and that three vaccine candidates are in different phases of clinical trials.
Vardhan said, “One hundred and forty-five vaccine candidates across the world are under pre-clinical evaluation, around 35 under clinical trials. In India, we gave all support to 30 vaccine candidates – three of these are in advanced trials of phases 1, 2, and 3. Over four in advanced stages of the pre-clinical trial.” The Centre is closely tracking the progress of candidates being tested by the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech International Limited and Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila. Bharat Biotech's Covaxin is one of the leading players in the race for a vaccine in India.
Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) has struck a production and clinical trials deal with AstraZeneca for the UK's Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which has till now been tested in the most number of people.
Vardhan also said, “On January 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the world about such disease. But we started work on January 8. By January 17, we had issued a detailed health advisory and started point of entry surveillance and community surveillance. On January 30, when the first case in India was reported, authorities did 162 contact tracing.” He said so far 63.7 million tests have been conducted in the country which is “probably the highest in the world.”
“Even today, 40,00,000 people were kept under community surveillance. Contract tracing of more than 10 million people was done. Fifteen lakh people were screened at airports. When the first case in Nepal was reported, 16,00.000 people were screened on the border. From March 16 to March 23, more than half of the states have imposed partial or complete lockdown,” he added.
Vardhan said that the ministry of health and family welfare has received £89.39 million from PM-CARES Fund for 50,000 made in India ventilators. The National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) under the National Disaster Relief Fund made the provision of £1.1 billion to all state governments wherein the State Disaster Management Funds could be used. There are 17,000 Covid -19 facilities in the country which have nearly 1.8 million beds, 13,000 quarantine centres have 600,000 beds.
