Prime Minister Narendra Modi spent a little more than an hour at his first stoppage at Zydus Cadila's Biotech Park and assessed the preparations of the much-awaited Covid-19 vaccine.
Modi held a meeting with the management of Cadila Healthcare Limited (Zydus Cadila) at the facility, where ZyCoV-D vaccine is under development.
The company management, led by Chairman Pankaj Patel, briefed Modi on the vaccine development, its logistics and commercial aspects. After the meeting, the Prime Minister visited the research center inside the Biotech Park, and personally witnessed the vaccine development process. He was assisted by the research scientists.
Indigenous Covid-19 vaccine
Zydus Cadila's ZyCoV-D is one of the indigenous Covid-19 vaccine candidates, and is developed as a plasmid DNA vaccine. The company has successfully completed first trial, while the second trials is soon to be announced concluded. The company expects to commence the decisive third phase of clinical trial in December.
The first phase of clinical trials had begun on July 1, 2020, while the second phase of the trials started on August 6, 2020. The Phase-2 study of ZyCoV-D vaccine candidate was conducted in over 1,000 healthy adult volunteers, as part of the adaptive Phase 1/2 dose escalation.
After landing at Ahmedabad airport at around 9:30 AM, Modi took a chopper to reach Zydus Cadila's Biotech Park at Changodar, which is an industrial area on the outskirts of the city. He spent about an hour at Zydus Cadila, before returning to Ahmedabad airport to fly to Hyderabad, his next stoppage in the three-city tour to Covid-19 vaccine development centers.
The PM will visit Bharat Biotech's vaccine facility in Hyderabad, and later in the day to Pune's Serum Institute of India before returning to Delhi by the end of the day.