ICMR’s top priority to take COVID vaccine to all at the earliest

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has a plan in place to ensure the COVID-19 vaccine (as and when it is ready) reaches everyone in the “shortest time”.

The ICMR talked about COVID vaccine, state of vaccine testing and its production in India, practices followed in the production process etc. in the August edition of its internal newsletter, e-Samvaad.

“Once we get a go-ahead from scientists, we are ready to massively scale up mass production,” said an editorial titled ‘ICMR scripting history in combating COVID-19 pandemic in India’ published on the newsletter’s front page.

Outlining its preparedness, ICMR said “India is preparing for the challenges of production, distribution and mass immunisation once the vaccine is successfully tested.”

The ICMR has emphasized on the need to follow the best practices in vaccine development.

Earlier, a controversy had erupted over ICMR’s push to have a vaccine out by 15 August. The scientific community had then argued that bringing out the vaccine so early is highly improbable and dangerous.

Related news: Preparations on for Phase 2 of human trials of Covaxin vaccine

“…Development of vaccines needs to follow the best practices and globally accepted norms,” ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava is quoted as saying in the newsletter.
Lauding its own testing ability, the ICMR stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set a target of 1 million COVID-19 tests per day by August, and the ICMR achieved it “way before the time limit”.

The newsletter names top three companies that are conducting clinical trials in India:

• Covaxin – Developed indigenously by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the ICMR
• ZyCoV-D – Developed by Zydus Cadila
• ChADOx1 – Developed jointly by British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford (Pune-based Serum Institute of India is a partner)