Chairperson and managing director of Bengaluru-based Biocon Kiran Mazumdar Shaw said a vaccine for COVID-19 could be available in India by June 2021.
While speaking to Mint, Shaw said that the first mRNA vaccines will be approved by the end of 2021, but they are not going to be available in India as they need a -80 degree cold chain and that is not something which the country can handle.
"I expect that by January, some of the other vaccines could be approved like AstraZeneca's or one of our own Indian vaccines like the one by Bharat Biotech. If we finish the clinical trials in the next two-three months, even those may be approved by January-February. So I would expect that in Q1FY22 we should have vaccines available in India and other parts of the world," Shaw told Mint.
Many pharmaceutical companies in India and across the globe are in various stages of clinical trials to come out with vaccines for the novel coronavirus. She told the newspaper that these vaccine candidates would be approved for emergency use and full approval would come only after evaluating the durability of responses.
Meanwhile, with a spike of 50,129 Covid-19 cases and 578 deaths in the last 24 hours, India's overall infection tally and the death toll increased to 78,64,811 and 1,18,534, respectively, on Sunday, according to the Health Ministry.
Presently, the number of active cases stands at 6,68,154 after a decrease of 12,526 in the last 24 hours. On the other hand, the total recoveries have reached 70,78,123, of which 62,077 were cured and discharged in the last 24 hours, the data released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare revealed. While the recovery rate stands at 90 percent, the fatality rate is 1.51 percent.
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