With developed and upcoming vaccines in line, Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally visited 3 major vaccine developing and testing facilities in different cities on November 28, 2020.
The Prime Minister also inspected the status of development, production process and preparations for launch and distribution of the vaccine in the country.
He visited 3 centres in Ahmedabad, Pune and Hyderabad to review the production.
The Prime Minister’s Office released the schedule the previous that included three major vaccine developing centres in India that will be visited by the Prime Minister.
He visited the Zydus Biotech Park in Ahmedabad first and flew over to Pune to Serum Institute of India (SII) and finally visited Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad.
Zydus Cadila completed its phase 2 testing with Pegylated Interferon alpha-2b, ‘PegiHep’. The pharma giant is set to conduct phase 3 trials for India.
The Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune has partnered with the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca for the testing and distribution of the vaccine in the country. The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca will be acting at an efficacy of 60-70 % and still be viable against the coronavirus, and have different reactions on people of varied age groups.
He then visited Bharat Biotech’s research facility in Hyderabad, which is working on a potential vaccine candidate Covaxin to review the progress. Bharat is working in partnership with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
PM Modi shared moments of his visits on Twitter and complimented the teams for working successfully on the vaccines. He also tweeted that Bharat Biotech is working with ICMR for speedy progress.
PM Modi has decided to take up the offer of Xavier Bettel of Luxembourg firm B Medical Systems to aid the distribution of vaccines throughout the country’s rural and remote areas via appropriate transportation, like transportation boxes and storage freezers for the vaccines.
India has registered a total of 9.35 million cases with an approximate of 1,36,000 deaths from the beginning of the pandemic. Though the rate of infection has slowed down recently, fear of a fresh second wave hitting still prevails.
PMO Twitter:
Zydus Biotech Park:
Bharat Biotech:
