If everything goes well India would get COVID-19 vaccine by year-end: Harsh Vardhan

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said that if everything goes well, India would get a vaccine against vel coronavirus by end of this year.

Three COVID-19 vaccine candidates, including two indigeus ones, are in different phases of development in India.

phase-one human clinical trials of two indigeus COVID-19 vaccine candidates, one developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR and or by Zydus Cila Ltd, have been completed and trials have moved to phase-two, ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava h said recently.

Serum Institute of India, which has partnered with AstraZeneca for manufacturing COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by University of Oxford has been permitted for conducting its phase two and three human clinical trials in India. It is likely to start trials next week.

In a tweet in Hindi, Vardhan said on Saturday, "I hope that if everything goes well, India will get a coronavirus vaccine by end of this year." Meanwhile, apex health research body, ICMR, is in process of developing an online vaccine portal which will provide information related to COVID-19 vaccine development in India and abro, with majority of updates in several regional langus in dition to English.

aim of creating website is to provide all information and updates relating to COVID-19 vaccine development on one platform as all information in this regard is scattered as of w, Samiran Panda, He of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases at ICMR, told PTI on Saturday.

idea behind making updates available in regional langus is to make sure that every citizen is able to access information. portal is likely to be functional by next week, Panda said.

With a single-day spike of 69,239 infections, India's COVID-19 caselo mounted to 30,44,940 on Sunday, while death toll climbed to 56,706 with 912 fatalities being reported in 24 hours, data updated at 8 am showed.