Chennai: Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said the rapidness at which coronavirus vaccines are being developed will have a significant effect on new technologies that will help in faster drug discoveries, lowering the cost and making it more affordable for the poor.
Addressing the Boston Center of Excellence (BoCE) for Health and Human Development through video conference, he said the process, which used to take 10 years to produce vaccines, is now done in almost 10 months.
Saluting the millions of frontline workers and elaborating India’s strategy to contain the virus, he said, “It is not the first one and definitely not the last one. But this Covid-19 will soon be a past episode of the 21st century. Our treatment protocol for Covid patients is well defined now.”
He added: “Fewer and fewer people infected are dying. We will have vaccines available very soon and the cases will significantly go down in the next few months.”
Vardhan added: “The rapidness with which we have been able to create vaccines will have a cascading effect on new technologies that will help us all in the near future in faster drug discoveries, lowering the cost and making it more affordable for poorer sections of our population.”
The knowledge of drug discovery will also help to develop in several new frontiers, as they may enable to find a cure for many viral ailments that do not respond to antibiotics, Vardhan said and expressed hope that the research might have potential in treating superbugs.