Union Minister of State for Home G. Kishan Reddy on Saturday thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for choosing the National Institute of Animal Biotechnology, Hyderabad, under the Department of Biotechnology as one of the two vaccine testing laboratories in the country. The other one is the National Centre for Cell Science, Pune.
These two labs are being funded under PM-CARES and the operations at the lab here is expected to commence in a month. At present, there are two vaccine testing laboratories — Central Drug Laboratory at Kasauli and National Institute of Biologicals at Noida.
The Union Minister said Hyderabad is home to many big pharma companies, COVID-19 vaccine production companies and R&D institutions, and the setting up of a new vaccine testing laboratory will be a big step forward towards the comprehensive development of this sector besides boosting the production of COVID-19 vaccines, a press release informed.