‘Covid-19 Vaccine By Aug 15’, Not Possible!

ICMR

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) made a surprise announcement the other day that the Covid-19 vaccine would be ready by Independence Day i.e, August 15th. On the contrary this announcement has baffled Hyderabad based company Bharat Biotech which got approvals of developing the vaccine.

In response to ICMR announcement, Bharat Biotech stated that it would take at least 15 months for the clinical trials to show any sort of result whereas the deadline set by ICMR is just 40 odd days away. For clinical trials, the guidelines set by Clinical Trial Registry of India (CTRI) should be followed while Bharat Biotech has planned the trials in two phases.

Also the Hyderabad firm needs 1,125 volunteers for the trials and it is not an easy task to recruit such a number. Even if it is done, the effect of vaccine on the volunteers will not show at any result until the next six months. All these are the standard procedures and ICMR has put Bharat Biotech in a spot of bother with its announcement.

All in all experts believe that if ICMR is putting pressure on companies developing vaccine, it would lead to potential risk and more chaos.

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