Six Indian companies working on frontline for COVID-19 Vaccine

Six Indian companies are working on the frontline, day and night, in order to find a cure to the novel coronavirus, that has been declared a pandemic across the world. Reports now suggest that close to 70 vaccine candidates’ are now being tested upon.

“While Zydus Cadila is working on two vaccines, Serum Institute, Biological E, Bharat Biotech, Indian Immunologicals, and Mynvax are developing one vaccine each,” Gagandeep Kang, executive director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, told PTI.

That said, experts also suggest that a vaccine



for the novel coronavirus is unlikely to be ready for mass use before 2021.

“Generally, vaccines take several months to pass the different stages of testing, and then approvals also take time. For COVID-19, we don’t expect a vaccine to come in this year,” said Rakesh Mishra, director of the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad.

According to the government, the rate of infection is low in India, with one in every 24 samples testing positive. Meanwhile, the new testing kits that arrived from China will be used for surveillance, and not diagnosis.