There is a process to be followed for EUL and pre-qualification of vaccines under which a company has to complete phase 3 trials and submit the whole data to the regulatory department of WHO which is examined by an expert advisory group," Swaminathan said.
Monkeypox is a rare zoonotic disease that is caused by infection with monkeypox virus. Monkeypox virus belongs to the family Poxviridae, which also includes the viruses causing smallpox and cowpox disease
Amid a spurt in cases, the cabinet secretary held a meeting chief secretaries, health and urban development secretaries of all states through a video link and they were asked to also pay special attention to the emerging epicentres of COVID-19 cases and undertake stringent containment measures to check the contagion, the ministry said.
Phase-I clinical trials have revealed "excellent safety" of the two candidate vaccines indigenously developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research and Cadila Healthcare Ltd and their immunogenicity testing is now in progress, minister of state for health Ashwini Choubey informed the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
Modi attended the 20th ASEAN-India Summit in Jakarta. Secretary-General of ASEAN Dr Kao Kim Hourn also attended the summit.
'The idea is to have a place where people can come together and bridge the gap. It will be a contemporary design for the future, and not have the shadows of the past' Ritwik Sharma reports.
A 22-year-old man, who recently returned to Kerala from the UAE, allegedly died due to monkeypox on Saturday.
Eradicating the Aedes aegypti or developing a vaccine will take years. Genetic modification offers a way out; the question is how to scale it up across continents, says Devangshu Datta.
"On space, we will be able to announce that India is signing the Artemis Accords, which advance a common vision for space exploration for the benefit of all humankind," a senior administration official said hours before the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden in the Oval Office.
A number of Indian medical experts on Monday supported calls from an eminent British Indian cardiologist for a full safety review into the use of Oxford/AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine, administered in India as Covishield, over feared serious side effects such as heart attack and stroke.
Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) said on Monday that it had raised the highest-ever corpus of annual funds for the institution, garnering Rs 231 crore from alumni, industry and individual donors for 2022-23 (FY23). Its funding increased 76 per cent year-on-year (YoY) compared to Rs 131 crore in FY22, according to data shared by the institute. The number of donors contributing more than Rs 1 crore increased 64 per cent YoY.
'There is a deep stigma or taboo attached to COVID-19 in rural areas.' 'People don't want to test because they fear social exclusion.' 'Even those who test positive may not reveal and not follow the quarantine protocol.'
The Union Budget on Wednesday outlined several initiatives to drive India's technology agenda and boost digital infrastructure, including new centres of excellence for artificial intelligence, National Data Governance Policy, and Entity DigiLocker.
Reinvent and innovate will be the key mantra for the Indian pharma industry in the New Year as the 'pharmacy of the world' looks to move from volume to value leadership, amid emerging challenges of inflation and pricing pressures in the global markets. While R&D investment, market competitiveness, regulatory scrutiny, and domestic price regulations are expected to shape the growth of generics and injectable products, concerns such as price control and customs duties on medical equipment will continue to bother the healthcare industry in 2023. The industry believes that in view of India's G20 Presidency, digital health innovation, achieving universal health coverage, improving healthcare infrastructure and delivery will continue to be the key driving factors in 2023.
According to these experts, a monkeypox outbreak can effectively be tackled by strong surveillance.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's three-day visit to Britain has seen India and the UK agreeing on Rs 90,000 crore deals.
The ICMR has already approved a bunch of rapid test kits for launch. The health ministry admitted that clusters of COVID-19 had appeared in many states and the risk of further spread remains very high.
Niclosamide, a drug on the World Health Organisation's list of essential medicines, has been used to treat tapeworm infestation for more than 50 years. The oral antiviral drug was also used to treat patients during the SARS outbreak of 2003-04.
As the world celebrated International Day of Persons with Disabilities (PwD) on December 3, corporate India has kept up with efforts to make workplaces more inclusive and accessible. Organisations across sectors are taking initiatives such as equipping offices with practical work tools like Braille-friendly and voice-enabled lifts and screen readers. While inclusion has gained pace, only 11.3 per cent (or 3.4 million out of 30 million) Indians with disabilities have jobs.
Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy passed away on Tuesday due to a cardiorespiratory arrest after a prolonged illness, a company statement said. He was 75. He was 75. According to the company statement, he passed away at 10.30 pm due to cardio-respiratory arrest following an extended battle with complications arising from metastatic malignancy, hypertension, and diabetes.
According to BCM, Hyderabad-headquartered BE has licensed the recombinant protein Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed at Baylor.
The Gam-COVID-Vac, called Sputnik V, is a two-part vaccine that includes two adenovirus vectors -- recombinant human adenovirus type 26 (rAd26-S) and recombinant human adenovirus type 5 (rAd5-S).
Asserting that it is for the first time that BRICS has taken a collective position on strengthening and reforming multilateral systems, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "We have to ensure that BRICS is more productive in the next 15 years".
King Charles III, Britain's new monarch who ascended to the throne on the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II, has a strong connection with India and its age-old traditions of Yoga and Ayurveda.
The National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune under the ICMR has isolated the monkeypox virus from the clinical specimen of a patient, which can pave the way for development of diagnostic kits and vaccines against the disease, officials said on Wednesday.
Her appointment as World Health Organisation's deputy director offers an opportunity to push for improving the medical research environment in India.
In its morning update, the Union health ministry said the total number of positive cases has reached 2,16,919 with a record spike of 9,304 new cases since Wednesday 8 am across the country, while the death toll has increased to 6,075 with 260 more fatalities in this period. A PTI tally of figures announced by different states and union territories, as of 9.50 pm, showed a higher number of confirmed cases across the country at 2,17,389 and the death toll at 6,233.
The official data maintained by the Centre-run System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research put the condition at severely polluted. The Particulate Matter 2.5 level was recorded at 146 while the PM 10 was at 233 in New Delhi.
'By the time actual action began, it was already too late.' 'The virus was raging.'
On when vaccination for children could start as Zydus Cadila's Covid vaccine has been granted emergency use authorisation for those 12-year-old and above, he said children were not being inoculated against COVID-19 on a large scale anywhere in the world though it has been initiated in some countries in a limited manner.
Bayannur, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, announced a level III warning of plague prevention and control, state-run People's Daily Online reported. The suspected bubonic plague case was reported on Saturday by a hospital in Bayannur.
India has the fourth highest number of malaria cases in the world.
The ministry said the country has a robust system of reporting deaths, including those caused by COVID-19, and the data is compiled regularly at different levels of governance, starting from the gram panchayat level to the district level and the state level.
About 50 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Nigeria and Panama, have shown interest in having a Co-WIN like system to run their vaccination drive, a senior official said on Monday, adding India is ready to share the open source software free of cost.
An overarching law governing public healthcare is a glaring gap in India's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. In India it is left to individuals to quarantine themselves voluntarily. Moreover, the 123-year old The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, governs healthcare emergencies in India.
The test used now, called PCR (or polymerace chain reaction), uses a nasal or throat swab sample and identifies the virus. These tests take at least five hours to give results. The rapid test, on the other hand, uses a blood sample and gives results based on detecting the presence of certain antibodies that react to the coronavirus protein.
In a statement, the ministry also said several steps have been planned to support the cheetah project, including the establishment of a Cheetah Research Center with facilities for rescue, rehabilitation, capacity building, and interpretation.
'There are not enough RT-PCR tests and they take a long time to do in specialised centres. So the world is using RA tests for the same reason that India is using them, and with similar somewhat spuriously comforting rationale'
To build one's political and ideological arguments on the dead bodies piling up outside our crematoriums is despicable and breaches the basic tenet of human civility, argues Vivek Gumaste.
