ICMR partners with Bharat biotech to develop Covid-19 vaccine

Days after a path breaking discovery announced by Israel, Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) on Saturday declared a research collaboration with Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech International Ltd (BBIL) to amp up the development of COVID-19 vaccine.

The ICMR representative stated that for the development of the vaccine, the virus strain has been isolated at the National Institute of Virology, Pune and transferred to BBIL.

Trials on covid-19 vaccine is in the pipeline and the two partners have been in complete coordination. The ICMR-NIV has prepped up to provide support exclusively to BBIL for the manufacturing of the vaccine

The apex health body said in a statement that it will give fast track approvals to ICMR and BBIL for a quicker development of the vaccine against Covid-19 including animal trials and clinical efficacy of the vaccine.

In general for any health body to approve, it takes a minimum of 4-5 years. However, since the outbreak happened earlier too and some companies have had a prior knowledge, the process was revved up 5 times faster than the conventional process.

40 vaccine candidates are in multitude stages of development around the world to combat Covid-19 pandemic. Of late, the Oxford University stated that their researches had begun testing a vaccine against the Covid-19. The Serum Institute of India, one of the largest vaccine manufacturers across the globe had partnered for the bulk production of the vaccine.

In India, the novel coronavirus has so far caused 1,981 mortalities as the total number of cases approach the 60,000 mark. With these rapid developments and large number of pharma companies encompassing across India, many predicted that India would be the first to produce the vaccines in bulk.