73 days to COVID-19 vaccine; Indians to get free shots

 

India's first Covid vaccine-Serum Institute's 'Covishield'- are going to be commercialised in 73 days. Indians are going to be immunised free under the National Immunisation Programme (NIP) as is that the case with all other vaccines under the programme.

"The government has given us a 'special manufacturing priority license' and fast-tracked the trial protocol processes to get the trials completed in 58 days. By this, the first dosing is happening from today in the final phase (Phase III) and the second dosing will happen after 29 days. the final trial data will be out in another 15 days from the second dosing. By that time, we are planning to commercialise Covishield," a Serum Institute of India (SII) top official exclusively revealed.

Earlier, the third phase trials were expected to require a minimum 7-8 months.

The trial among 1600 volunteers at 17 centres, each with about 100 volunteers, started on Aug 22.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has also said that one among our COVID-19 vaccine candidates is within the third phase of the clinical test . "We are very confident that a vaccine will be developed by end of this year," he said.

The source said the vaccine will belong to Serum Institute, because the company has entered into an exclusive agreement with Astra Zeneca to shop for rights and pay a royalty fee for exclusively selling it in India and 92 other countries. The central government has already indicated to SII that it'll directly procure the vaccines and is getting to immunise Indians for free of charge . Centre has sought 68 crore doses for 130 crore Indian citizens from Serum Institute by June, next year.

For the rest, it's likely to put orders with 'Covaxine' being developed by ICMR and Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila's 'ZyCoV-D' if their trials proceed successfully.

Bharat Biotech is yet to point when it might start and finish the trials, though Bharat Biotech's CMD Krishna Ella had said that to make sure safety and efficacy it might not expedite the vaccine with short-cuts.

Serum is beginning to manufacture 6 crore doses per month which can be increased to 10 crore per month by April, 2021. this is often being done by re-engineering its vaccine manufacturing lines that it's spent nearly Rs 200 crore. SII, the most important vaccine maker within the world, features a capacity to form 150 crore doses a year.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has agreed to fund Serum with about $150 million (nearly Rs 1125 crore) to supply and provide around 10 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccine for supply to low income countries. which will help SII to scale back the worth to about Rs 250 per dose from over Rs 1,000 per dose, the source said.

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India records decline in daily Covid-19 cases and deaths

 

The health ministry’s dashboard showed that the amount recovered patients climbed to 1,977,779 as 57,937 people were cured of Covid-19 between Monday and Tuesday morning. With that, India’s recovery rate climbed to 73.17%.

India saw 55,079 cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and 875 deaths, rock bottom in nearly every week , within the last 24 hours, bringing the country’s case count to 2,702,742, consistent with the Union health ministry data.

There has been a decline within the daily number of Covid-19 cases for the last three days--there were 63,490 infections last Sunday and 57,981 on Monday, the health ministry’s data showed.

The health ministry’s dashboard showed that the amount recovered patients climbed to 1,977,779 as 57,937 people were cured of Covid-19 between Monday and Tuesday morning. With that, India’s recovery rate climbed to 73.17%.

The gap between the active cases at 673,166 and recovered cases within the country has widened further at 1,304,613. The country’s price from the coronavirus disease is now at 51,797. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has said 3,09,41,264 samples were tested up to Monday for Covid-19. Of these, 8,99,864 samples were tested on Monday, the highest research body said.

“A new peak of 8.97 lakh #COVID19 tests were done in the last 24 hours. Even with such a high level of testing, the positivity has remained low i.e. 8.81% compared to the weekly national average i.e. 8.84%,” the health ministry said in a tweet on Tuesday.

“Focused implemention of Centre-led strategies has ensured prompt identification, timely isolation & effective clinical treatment, leading to reduced Case fatality rate. 30 States/UTs performed better than the national average,” it added.

The government has asked five pharmaceutical firms, including three that have candidates in clinical trials, prepare and a present a comprehensive note on the way forward by Thursday on how soon they will produce large quantities and what pricing they expect if their shot is approved.

The meeting was held between an expert group spearheading India’s vaccine strategy and involved Serum Institute of India, Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila – all three have vaccine candidates in human trials. Serum Institute is licensed to supply up to some quantities the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is essentially considered the winner globally.

The two others were Biological E and Gennova, both of which have candidates in preclinical phases. Trial data of none of the India-made vaccines is yet to be made available.

“Even as scientists are working to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, we are simultaneously working on procuring the final product to ensure availability and access to our population,” Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said following Monday’s meeting. “. As part of India’s proactive, pre-emptive and graded response to Covid-19 since January, the expert group is holding consultations with vaccine manufacturers to plan ahead for the production, pricing and distribution of the vaccine, whenever it is ready,” he added.

India has not struck a pre-production affect any of the vaccine developers that are within the race for a successful candidate, a technique several advanced economies like us , uk and a few European Union nations have adopted so as to leap what could be an extended queue .

Of these countries, the US has the foremost number of infections at 5,437,851, followed by Brazil with 3,359,570 cases. There are quite 21 million cases of the coronavirus disease and 773,152 deaths across the planet .