Centre accords CISF cover for Bharat Biotech campus in Hyderabad

The sources said the Union home ministry recently sanctioned a proposal to deploy the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) at this facility, following which the force carried out a survey.

PTI
June 08, 2021 / 08:35 PM IST

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The Centre has accorded a security cover of armed CISF commandos for the Hyderabad premises of Bharat Biotech, one of the major COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers in the country, official sources said on Tuesday. They said the registered office and plant of the company located at Genome Valley in the Shameerpet area of Telangana's capital city will be secured by a team of 64 armed personnel of the paramilitary force.

The sources said the Union home ministry recently sanctioned a proposal to deploy the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) at this facility, following which the force carried out a survey.

"The organisation is an important facility when it comes to ensuring medical and health security of the country and it obviously faces a terror threat from various inimical elements.

"The CISF, hence, has been tasked to secure the Bharat Biotech facility in Hyderabad," an official said.

The force will be inducted at the facility on June 14, CISF Deputy Inspector General and Chief Spokesperson Anil Pandey told PTI.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

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How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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Bharat Biotech is the manufacturer of COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin.

India at present is administering Covaxin and Covishield (manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India), apart from small doses of Sputnik V to its citizens to battle the coronavirus pandemic.

The CISF was allowed to secure private installations of public importance following the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, where five-star luxury hotels and a Jewish Chabad house were targeted by members of the Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The force guards about 10 such facilities across the country, including the Infosys campuses in Pune and Mysuru, the Reliance IT Park in Navi Mumbai and Yoga exponent Ramdev's Patanjali factory premises in Uttarakhand's Haridwar.

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PTI
TAGS: #Bharat Biotech #Business #CISF #coronavirus #India
first published: Jun 8, 2021 08:32 pm