Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
New Delhi, Aug 13
The Prime Minister’s high-powered Task Force on Vaccine headed by Dr V K Paul will be formulating its strategy to obtain the Russian vaccine to fight Covid pandemic.
The multi-member committee which met for several hours yesterday has not only to submit its report to the Prime Minister about the efficacy of the Russian Sputnik-V but also in how much quantity and what should be the funding mechanism.
The Task Force has to take a crucial decision about whether to procure several other Covid Vaccine candidates being manufactured in various parts of the world.
The Indian government has not assigned any fund for the research & development for Covid vaccines. Five vaccines are in the advanced stage of producing it including three Western and two Chinese. These all are in Phase 3 efficacy trials involving thousands of people.
Oxford University, working with the Swedish-British pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca, hopes to have results by September, while the US biotech company Moderna, partnering with the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), is aiming for the end of the year, possibly November.
The Trump administration has spent nearly $ 10 billion to seven vaccine developers and signed manufacturing contracts with five of them to provide nearly one billion doses.
Japan is also negotiating with three suppliers and Britain is also signing deals with such manufacturers.
But India is banking on its own Convaxin being jointly produced by Bharat Biotech-ICMR and Zydus which are still in phase-I and Phase-II trials. The Task Force has to urgently take a view on Russian vaccine as it’s a friendly country. The presence of the secretary of the ministry of external affairs in the meeting indicates that India will try to obtain the Russian vaccine. The modalities are being worked out, these sources say.
