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

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

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

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

READ | Centre Briefs Lok Sabha On COVID-19 Vaccine Trials In India; 7 Manufacturers Shortlisted

READ | Coronavirus LIVE Updates: India's Tally Crosses 52 Lakh; Lok Sabha Briefed On Vaccines

Two indigeus vaccine candidates

Citing World Health Organisation's data, Choubey said that re are 36 candidate vaccines globally which are under various sts of clinical trials, of which two are indigeus 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  Serum Institute of India conducting phase 2 and 3 trials of Oxford vaccine in collaboration with AstraZeneca.

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

Health Ministry also said that AYUSH system of medicine is useful in COVID-19 manment and vetted guidelines have been made available in public domain for benefit of more than 7 lakh registered AYUSH practitioners to man 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 ir team of experts and vetted by Interdisciplinary AYUSH Research and Development Task Force of Ministry of AYUSH.  Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) is purposed with developing education, research and propagation of indigeus alternative medicine systems in India.

(With PTI inputs)

READ | Trump Expects To Have Eugh COVID-19 Vaccine For Every US Citizen By April 2021

READ | China Has 11 COVID-19 Vaccines In Clinical Trials, Four In Phase III: Minister