'Govt talking to Russia for advancing vaccine to India', Health Ministry informs Lok Sabha

The Government of India is in talks with the Russian government for exploring the possibility of cooperation for advancing its COVID-19 vaccine in India, Health Ministry apprised the Parliament on Friday. Minister of State for Health Ashwini Choubey informed the Lok Sabha.

He, however, said that it is difficult to comment on the exact timelines about the availability and procurement of a safe vaccine due to the various complex pathways involved in the vaccine development.  

While elaborating on the measures taken by the government for the availability of drugs and vaccination over COVID-19, Choubey informed that the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) has approved the manufacturing and marketing of three drugs - Remdesivir Injectable formulations, Favipiravir tablets, Itolizumab injection - for restricted emergency use in the country for treatment of coronavirus infection.

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Two indigenous vaccine candidates

Citing the World Health Organisation's data, Choubey said that there are 36 candidate vaccines globally which are under various stages of clinical trials, of which two are indigenous vaccines by Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and Zydus Cadila's ZyCov-D which have been granted permission for conducting phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, apart from the Serum Institute of India conducting phase 2 and 3 trials of the Oxford vaccine in collaboration with AstraZeneca.

Meanwhile, Russia’s R-Pharm on Friday announced the approval of coronavir for the treatment of mild to moderate Covid-19 coronavirus infection.

The Health Ministry also said that the AYUSH system of medicine is useful in COVID-19 management and vetted guidelines have been made available in the public domain for the benefit of more than 7 lakh registered AYUSH practitioners to manage the pandemic uniformly.

Responding to a question in Lok Sabha, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said that guidelines for registered practitioners of respective system of AYUSH have been prepared by director generals of research councils and directors of national institutes with their team of experts and vetted by the Interdisciplinary AYUSH Research and Development Task Force of the Ministry of AYUSH. The Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) is purposed with developing education, research and propagation of indigenous alternative medicine systems in India.

(With PTI inputs)

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