India has become one of the frontrunners in the global effort to develop a vaccine for the containment of Covid-19 pandemic. Government agencies have stepped up collaboration with private partners to fastrack the approval process needed for development of a potential Covid vaccine. Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadilla started the human clinical trials of their potential vaccines after getting the approvals from the Central Drug Standard Control Organization. India has fast tracked its efforts for the development of Covid-19 vaccine which are under human clinical trials stage. India is considered a pharmacy of the world and 60 per cent of the vaccine at world level is supplied by India. ICMR and Bharat Biotech have joined hands for the development of a potential Covid-19 vaccine called ‘Covaxin’ whereas the Department of Biotechnology has partially funded the development of Zydus’s vaccine ZyCov-D. Zydus has set the target to complete the phase-I and II human clinical trial in the next three months. However, the final outcome will depend on the cooperation of all clinical sites involved in this project.
Another top Indian pharma company Serum Institute of India has bagged a contract with British drugmaker AstraZeneca to supply one billion doses of Oxford University’s potential COVID-19 vaccine. This vaccine is currently at the most advanced stage at the world level. The World Health Organization has expressed hope that the Covid vaccine will come by next year.
