Centre to support Serum Institute for phase 3 trial of Oxford vaccine in India

The central government said that the Union Health Ministry would provide all support to The Serum Institute of India (SII) which is aiming to develop a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year and will be starting human trials of its Oxford vaccine in the country from August.

New Delhi: Amid an ongoing phase 1 and 2 trial of the two indigenous COVID-19 vaccines in India, the central government on Tuesday said that the Union Health Ministry would provide all support to Serum Institute of India (SII) to conduct phase 3 trial of the Oxford vaccine.

"Regulatory process will be fastened and all support will be provided to Serum Institute," said NITI Aayog member VK Paul. Echoing the same sentiment, Dr Rajesh Bhusan, Officer on Special Duty (OSD) said that India's drug controller general (CDSCO) has already accelerated regulatory process for all such initiatives.

It may be mentioned here that SII has tied up with AstraZeneca for manufacturing the Oxford vaccine candidate ChAdOxi. An initial study of Oxford Covid vaccine has indicated that it's safe and develop antibody response in participants.

Dr Bhushan also said that another COVID-19 vaccine candidate conducted in China found safe. Dr Bhushan informed that health ministry is also discussing strategies for manufacturing and distribution of COVID-19 vaccine, once it is approved.

Talking to the reporters, Dr Bhushan who is going to assume the charge as Union Health Secretary from August 1 has informed that many of the recovered COVID-19 patients have been developing some other complications like breathing problem, blood pressure among others.

"The joint monitoring group (JMG) set up by the Health Ministry has presently been doing a study on such behaviour and will release protocol to counter such issues," said Dr Bhushan.

Ever since COVID-19 stuck India, the health ministry has set up JMG consisting of scientists, domain experts to guide the ministry on clinical management protocol and other critical issues.

Referring to N95 masks, Dr Bhushan said that health ministry has issued instructions to avoid using N95 masks carrying valved respirator. The Health Ministry in a letter issued to health secretaries in States and UTs have said that there is an inappropriate use of the N95 mask (particular with a valved respirator) by the public other than designated health workers.

"The use of valved respirator N95 masks is detrimental to the measures adopted for preventing the spread of Corona Virus as it does not prevent the virus from escaping out of the mask...follow the guidelines on the use of face mouth cover and prevent inappropriate use of N95 mask," a letter signed by Dr Rajiv Garg,

Director general of health service said. Talking on the community transmission of Covid cases in India, Dr Bhushan said that as per WHO guidelines there is no standard definition of such transmission.

"There is a large scale spike of COVID-19 cases from some pockets in many States but all those are tradable...in our term, we call then local transmission," Dr Bhushan said.

He also said that India aims to conduct 5 to 5.5 million tests per day which will later go up to 1 million test per day. Dr Bhushan said that AIIMS, Niti Aayog and ICMR will jointly launch an initiative from Wednesday to interact with doctors from across India to share best practices in containing COVID-19 cases.

Dr Bhushan further said that India's COVID-19 cases per million population are 837 which is amongst the lowest in the world (1841).

He said that India recorded 20.4 deaths per million population in India which is also amongst the lowest in the world.

He further informed that 19 states and UTs in India are performing more than 140 tests per day/ per million population. Interestingly, 30 states and UTs have COVID-19 positivity rate lower than the national average of 8.07 per cent whereas COVID-19 recoveries in India is 1.8 times higher than the number of active cases. In addition, 22 states and UTs in India have a lower case fatality rate than the national average of 2.43 per cent.

Meanwhile, India has registered 24,491 COVID-19 recovery cases in the last 24 hours taking the total recovery number to 7,24,577.