Chennai: The Indian Council of Medical Research has said 1,30,72,718 samples have been tested for Covid-19 so far.
Meanwhile, ICMR has once again that there is nothing wrong with the ambitious vaccine timeline and even went on to say that India will have a ‘big role’ to play in vaccine development globally.
Speaking at a virtual briefing, ICMR head, Balram Bhargava said the country’s top minds are at work to fast-track development. “India is well-known as the pharmacy of the world… It also supplies 60% of the world’s vaccines, whether it be Africa, Europe, south-east Asia or anywhere. So, any vaccine candidate that’s produced or developed in any part of the world will ultimately have to be scaled-up in India or by China because these are the two major vaccine producers of the world,” he said.
At present, work on two Indian vaccine prototypes has been streamlined by the DGCI. Bharat Biotech backed COVAXIN, which announced the start of phase I and II clinical trials at the beginning of the month is well on its course to conduct trials and has even recruited participants for the same from different parts of the country.
The other promising candidate is Ahmedabad based Zydus Cadila’s COVID-19 vaccine, which has shown promising results in early pre-clinical trials and toxicity studies.