Expert group of COVID vaccine reviewed procurement and pricing issues

The national expert group on vaccine administration held a meeting with the pharma companies involved in the trials of coronavirus vaccine. The group has also discussed the price of the vaccine.

New Delhi: The national expert group on vaccine administration on Monday held another crucial meeting with industry stakeholders over vaccine procurement process and pricing issues.

Official sources said that heads of several Pharma firms such as Serum Institute of India (SII), Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila were present in the meeting.

This was the second meeting of the committee after it met last week.

Given the fact that India can play a major role in COVID vaccine manufacturing process, the members in the group also discussed in details the status of the present vaccine, currently under clinical trial in India.

All the three Pharma companies are involved in the local trial of coronavirus vaccine. India is also considering the possibility of manufacturing Russian claimed coronavirus vaccine after it goes under proper clinical trial process.

The national expert group on the vaccine is being headed by Dr VK Paul, Niti Aayog member and co-headed by Rajesh Bhusan, secretary in the health ministry.

Sources said SII CEO Adar C Poonawalla, Krishna Ella, MD of Bharat Biotech and Pankaj R Patel, chairman of Zydus Cadila were present in the meeting. Representatives from Genova Biopharmaceutical, Pune and Biological E, Hyderabad were also present in the meeting.

Other members like Renu Swarup, secretary in the department of biotechnology, Dr Balram Bhargava, director general of ICMR and Dr PD Vaghela, secretary in the department of pharmaceutical were present.

"The meeting was mutually beneficial and productive. It provided the expert group with inputs about the present stage of various candidate vaccines being developed by the indigenous manufacturers as well as their expectations from the central government," a government official privy to the meeting said.

In another development, Indian Drug Manufacturer Associations (IDMA) as well as Indian Pharmaceutical Alliances, on Monday have appealed the central government to defer the process to refresh the list of essential medicines to next year citing Covid19 pandemic.

The ICMR is working on a plan to revise the National List of Essential Medicines (NELM) giving emphasis on treating cancer, diabetes and thyroid medicines.

A standing committee on medicines headed by YK Gupta had a meeting with stakeholder at ICMR today.

Meanwhile, a department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour had a discussion on the social security and welfare measures for interstate migrant, unorganised and informal sector workers.

Officials from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs gave a detailed presentation on the measures adopted by the Ministry to ensure the security and welfare of the migrant workers.

In a meeting earlier this month, the committee was informed by the government that out of the 116 worst affected districts identified by central and state governments under Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan (GKRA), 34 lakh migrant workers have been identified and skill mapping of 34,000 workers have been completed.

Meanwhile, the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has been ranked number one with 87.03 per cent as far as ensuring direct benefit transfers (DBT) to the beneficiaries are concerned. The ranking was done by the DBT Mission, which comes under the Cabinet Secretariat from April 2019 to March 2020.

Reacting over the achievements, Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that that three flagship programmes of the Ministry including Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM) and Swach Bharat have well-developed systems where the delivery is direct and money goes into the Aadhar account of the beneficiary.

"We have been monitoring it constantly and it has averted high delivery rate," said Puri.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas comes second with 83.56 per cent, the department of youth affairs comes third with 83.25 per cent. As many as 46 ministries were ranked for performance in DBT in 2019-20.