The Science and Technology ministry edited a press release to remove a sentence that suggested a vaccine against COVID-19 is "unlikely to be ready for mass use before 2021".
The Union Ministry of Science and Technology on July 5 retracted its statement suggesting a COVID-19 vaccine is unlikely to be ready for mass use before 2021, moments after it was published on the Press Information Bureau (PIB) website.
The ministry edited a release on the 'Indigenous Indian Covid-19 vaccines in the global race to end the pandemic' by Dr TV Venkateswaran on the PIB website.
Before being edited, the statement stated that along with the two Indian vaccine candidates, Covaxin and ZyCov-D, 11 of the 140 candidates worldwide have entered the human trials stage and none of these is likely to be ready for mass use before 2021.
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The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had claimed it aims to launch the indigenous COVID-19 vaccine by August 15.
On July 2, ICMR’s Director-General Balram Bhargava wrote to Bharat Biotech Chairman and Managing Director Krishna M Ella and Executive Director V Krishna Mohan, asking them to “fast track" clinical trials of vaccine candidate Covaxin.
ICMR and Bharat Biotech, a private pharmaceutical company, said that they had envisaged the vaccine to be launched for public health use latest by August 15, 2020. ICMR’s National Institute of Virology and Bharat Biotech are jointly developing a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The possibility of having a COVID-19 vaccine ready for public use by August 15 had raised concerns over potential lapses in clinical tests due to the hurry.
However, ICMR has since claimed that it only aims to complete the COVID-19 vaccine’s clinical trials as soon as possible, and August 15 is now a deadline.
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