India To Have COVID-19 Vaccines From Six Companies In The Markets By End Of Year: Dr Harsh Vardhan

In what would be a big boost for the national effort to end the menace of the COVID-19 pandemic, India is likely to have six different vaccines in the market by end of the year as per the details made public by Union Minister for Health Dr Harsh Vardhan, reports Times of India.

Dr Harsh Vardhan yesterday (6 March) shared that around 24 pharma companies are conducting trials for COVID-19 vaccines presently and that vaccines from six different companies would be available by the year-end.

Dr Harsh Vardhan also shared that India is already supplying vaccines to 60 nations across the globe. This gains significance as India is supplying vaccines to other nations while also inoculating its population.

Dr Harsh Vardhan shared the development while speaking at the inauguration of a COVID-19 diagnosis and research centre at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)'s National JALMA Institute for Leprosy and Other Mycobacterial Diseases in Agra.

India has authorised the use of Serum Institute of India (SII) manufactured Covishield and Bharat Biotech developed Covaxin vaccines.

It should be noted that Covishield has been developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in collaboration with the University of Oxford. Meanwhile, Covaxin has been indigenously developed by Bharat Biotech in a close collaboration with ICMR and Pune based National Institute of Virology.