Dengue has become a major public health concern in India with 289,235 cases reported last year. This year there were 19,447 cases of dengue which resulted in 19 deaths till April 2024.
SII has so far provided more than 170 crore doses of Covishield to the government for the national immunisation programme.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to announce a host of initiatives for the health sector on Independence Day with the highlights being the 'Heal in India' and 'Heal by India' projects and a roadmap to eliminate sickle cell disease by 2047, official sources said.
As many as 34 new drugs were added to and 26 dropped from an updated list of essential medicines on Tuesday, with the government saying this will reduce "patients' out-of-pocket expenditure". The National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM 2022) has 384 drugs, up from 376 in 2015. "Drafting this list is a lengthy process, and around 350 experts from across India have held over 140 consultation meetings to draft the NLEM 2022," Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said.
In September, Bharat Biotech aimed to supply 35 million doses, and take this up to 55 million by October. This is still less than what the Indian government expects from the company.
The government on Friday said there is no need to panic on the need for an immediate change in the dosage interval of Covishield vaccine, underlining that reducing the time gap requires proper scientific study in the Indian scenario.
According to officials, an additional dose of vaccine is different from a booster dose.
Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) is sitting on 200 million doses of Covishield that were manufactured in December and are set to expire in September. The company is likely to destroy these vaccines if nothing works out, Sohini Das reports.
The vaccine induced robust binding and neutralising antibody responses which were comparable to those observed in the convalescent serum collected from patients who had recovered from COVID-19, according to the findings which have appeared on medRxiv, a preprint server.
Serum Institute already has two deals of 100 million each to supply the Oxford-AstraZeneca and the Novavax vaccine to Gavi-Covax at $3 per dose.
The amount was pledged as Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the virtual Global Vaccine Summit hosted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in which over 50 countries, business leaders, United Nations agencies, civil society, government ministers, heads of state and country leaders participated.
A model being considered is to have a combined cold chain approach - where the agricultural cold chain would be combined with vaccine cold chains.
Frontline healthcare staff, people over the age of 80 and care home workers will be among the first to get the vaccine as part of Phase 1 of the programme from Tuesday, which was approved for rollout by the UK's independent regulator earlier this week.
The aim of the mission is to accelerate the development of at least six vaccine candidates and ensure that they are licenced and introduced in market for emergency use at the earliest.
'We need to prove to the world that quality vaccines and R&D are possible in India.'
History shows us that even effective vaccines could have unknown side effects that could develop over time, warns former Cabinet Secetary K M Chandrasekhar.
Aurobindo Pharma, Cadila Healthcare and Serum Institute are readying their vaccine candidates.
Modi said that mere government budget is insufficient to address the problems such as foeticide and nutrition.
Women are great team players and collaborators, 'but they don't put themselves forward,' Dr Gagandeep Kang, the first Indian woman scientist to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, tells Veenu Sandhu.
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