India On The Run For Coronavirus Vaccine: 6 Vaccine Identified, 30 Groups On Job

In India, there have been at least 6 vaccine candidates identified for the coronavirus pandemic. It’s been almost 6 months since the coronavirus first broke out in Wuhan, China. Although there hasn’t been any specific treatment for COVID-19, vaccine and medicine development for this pandemic has moved far along.

As the lethal virus continues to spread globally, vaccine research has attracted attention more significantly than ever before. Across the continent, the COVID-19 vaccine development is pressing ahead with over 110 vaccine candidates involved. 

When it comes to COVID-19 precautions and vaccine development, India is proactively engaging in. On Thursday, The Indian government made an official announcement about the identification of at least 6 local vaccine candidates. According to the statement, 30 groups in India are working on this project.

Principal Scientific Adviser, Prof. K VijayRaghavan said that 10 vaccine candidates were underway as a part of the vaccine research program. While 4 of these candidates are relatively ahead, there are 6 candidate vaccines that Indian laboratories are focusing on. According to Prof. K VijayRaghavan, among those candidates, the research team is strongly optimistic about 2-3 of them.

India is running a vaccine development program that concentrates on 3 different types of COVID-19 vaccines. By promoting collaboration with the world’s leading developers, the program is operating as effectively as planned.

Normally, the development of a vaccine takes between 10 and 15 years depending on the disease. Its cost usually varies from $200 to $300 million. However, regarding the urgent demand for specific COVID-19 treatment, scientists are expecting the vaccine to be ready by the end of this year.

Therefore, it requires an enormous amount of effort as well as parallel processing from all around the globe. Consequently, the cost of vaccine development can rocket to $3 billion. Even when they finally developed a vaccine, it cannot be distributed immediately.

Indian scientists are adopting the strategy in which they concurrently re-propose already available drugs and develop new ones. As constructing medical treatment from scratches consumes so much time, this strategy appears to be much more suitable. At the same time, CSIR and AICTE have been launching a high-class drug discovery hackathon.

A large number of med students have already taken part in the hackathon which provides them incredible access to computational tools. Prof. VijayRaghavan said that despite the low possibility for success, organizers were looking forward to some of them to become winners.