Harsh Vardhan, the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare said on Saturday that the country will have a vaccine against the deadly Covid-19 infection by the end of the year.
He told the reporters that, a coronavirus vaccine is expected in the next 4 to 5 months.
“I hope that if everything goes well, India will have access to a coronavirus vaccine by the end of 2020,” tweeted the minister.
One of the three coronavirus vaccine candidates has entered the 3rd phase of the pre-clinical human trial, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
According to head of the national task force on Covid-19, V.K. Paul, the vaccine candidate entering the 3rd phase has shown encouraging results in the initial phases of its trial.
Paul stated that the other two vaccines are now in Phase-1 or 2 of their pre-clinical trials.
Though, they did not revealed the names of the vaccines while sharing the status of their testing phase.
While the officials did not reveal the names of the vaccine candidates though speaking about their testing phase, it could be assumed that the vaccine entering the 3rd phase is Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, mutually developed with the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Recently, India has 3 vaccine candidates for coronavirus, ChAdOx1, developed by Oxford University and manufactured in collaboration with the Serum Institute of India, Pune and AstraZeneca; Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin vaccine mutually developed with the ICMR; and the third one is ZycovD by Zydus Cadila.
Earlier the Serum Institute of India said in the starting of Phase 2 trial of its coronavirus vaccine this week.
It also added that it has shortlisted ten centres around India to host Phase II and III human clinical trials.
Few days ago, Zydus Cadila administered the second dose of its coronavirus vaccine.
The developments on the vaccine came a day after the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration met 5 domestic vaccine manufacturers to review the clinical trial stages of these candidates. The manufacturers including two whose products are not yet in the clinical trial stage in India.
In the review meeting, Zydus Cadila had stated that it may be able to launch the vaccine by next year.
The country recorded 69,878 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total tally to 29,75,701 on Saturday morning, according to the Health Ministry.
At present, 945 people lost their lives due to coronavirus infection, pushing the death toll to 55,794.
