Six Indian companies in the frontline to develop coronavirus vaccine

Six Indian companies are working on a vaccine for COVID-19 and nearly 70 ‘vaccine candidates’ are being tested and at least three have moved to the human clinical trial stage, but a vaccine for the novel coronavirus is unlikely to be ready for mass use before 2021. “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.

Kang is also vice chair of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which noted in a recent study that the “global vaccine R&D effort in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in terms of scale and speed". However, it is a complicated process with many stages of testing and many challenges, explained experts. A vaccine for the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, may not take 10 years that other vaccines do but it could be at least a year before it is proven safe, effective, and made widely available, they said.

“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," agreed Rakesh Mishra, director of the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad.Vaccine testing typically begins with animal and lab testing before going on to different stages of human testing.“The human testing phase is composed of many phases," Sreekumar told PTI. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), three vaccine candidates are in the clinical testing phase, meaning they are able to be tested on humans, while nearly 70 are in the preclinical phase -- either in lab testing, or animal studies. The number of cases reported in India now stands at 13,387, of which 11,201 are active cases, according to the ministry of health. The govt however maintained that the rate of infection is low, with one in every 24 samples testing positive. Meanwhile the govt has said the new testing kits that arrived from China will be used for surveillance, and not diagnosis.