Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 28: The centre is taking steps to increase its basket of vaccines to expedite the process of vaccination in the country to meet its own deadline of vaccinated all adult population by the end of the current year.
Currently the country is using three Covid-19 vaccines, “Covishield” being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, “Covaxin” developed by Bharat Biotech and Russia’s Sputnik V. The government on Monday said it was working to ensure easier entry for the internationally developed vaccines against Coronavirus and expediting the process for vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna.
On being asked if India would soon grant indemnity to foreign vaccine makers, the union health secretary VK Paul said the clearance for the drugs had multiple dimensions. “The discussion for paving the way for internationally developed vaccines to India is going on. The issue has multiple dimensions and we are trying to find an agreed way forward at the earliest, Paul said.
The Covid-19 task force chief said the government was trying to expedite the progress in every possible way. This comes almost a week after US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said it was in the “final stages” of getting approval for its Covid-19 vaccine in India.
Pfizer chief executive officer (CEO) Albert Bourla had said he hoped the company to finalize an agreement with the Indian government “soon.”
“Pfizer now is in final stages to get approval for Covid-19 vaccine in India. I hope very soon we will finalize an agreement with the government,” Bourla had said at the 15th Annual BioPharma and Healthcare Summit last week.
The vaccine was developed by Pfizer in partnership with the German firm BioNtech. It has a very high efficacy of over 90 per cent in preventing the infection.
India is still at the stage where indemnity issues need to be sorted out with respect to approving the vaccines made by foreign companies.
Paul also said the process of getting Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin Emergency Use Listing (EUL) certificate from the World Health Organisation (WHO) was proceeding well.
Drug major Dr Reddy’s Laboratories on Monday announced the commercial launch of Covid-19 treatment drug, 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG), at a maximum retail price of ₹990 per sachet.
The company will supply the drug to major government as well as private hospitals across India, Dr Reddy’s said in a regulatory filing.
