New Delhi: Even as the countrywide vaccination is underway in India, the Serum Institute of India (SII) is working on four more vaccines against the novel coronavirus, said Suresh Jadhav, executive director, SII during a webinar. Jadhav informed that SII has been working on other vaccines apart from Covishield that got the nod for emergency use roll-out for mass immunization drive that began on Saturday.
Three vaccines are in different stages of clinical studies, while one is in pre-clinical stage, said Mr Jadhav.
SII has developed the first Covid vaccine from the masterseed of AstraZeneca/Oxford University’s vaccine against the disease. India’s drug regulator gave the green signal on January 3 for emergency use.
In response to sharp criticism on lack of transparency on data in their clinical trials, Jadhav said, ““It is not the only time when humanity has taken the chances. Four years back, there was an outbreak of Ebola in Africa and its vaccine by a Canadian pharmaceutical firm which had only completed the phase 1 and undergoing the phase 2 trial, was approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). The risk paid off and the vaccine helped in controlling the Ebola there.”
“In 2009 when the H1N1 pandemic flu struck, we took 1.5 years to develop and receive the approval for the vaccine against it after completing all the stages of clinical trials but the drug manufacturers in the West marketed such products in less than seven months then. Nobody questioned them then. Then why this sudden hullabaloo now?” he queried.
In the meantime, according to the Union Ministry report, more than 2.24 lakh individuals have been vaccinated at the end of two days of India’s vaccination drive.
Out of the beneficiaries, only 447 adverse events cases have been reported, 3 of them required hospitalisation, with 2 being discharged already.
