Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to visit drug makers in three cities of India personally to review the COVID-19 vaccine development and its manufacturing process on Saturday. He is going to visit Ahmedabad’s Zydus Biotech Park, Pune’s Serum Institute of India (SII) and Hyderabad’s Bharat Biotech.

The Prime Minister’s Office had tweeted on Saturday that India has entered a decisive phase in the battle against COVID-19, and PM would visit these facilities and discuss with the scientists to get a first-hand perspective of the preparations, roadmap and challenges in India’s endeavour to vaccinate its residents.

As per reports, the PM is going to first visit pharma major Zydus Cadila’s plant around 9.30am. Zydus Cadila had earlier announced that its phase-I clinical trial of its vaccine candidate ZyCoV-D was completed and it has started phase-II clinical trials from August.

He will then fly to Hyderabad From Ahmedabad, to visit vaccine maker Bharat Biotech’s facility. Currently, Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin is undergoing its phase-3 trials.

The PM will then visit Pune’s Serum Institute of India (SII), around 4.30pm. He will assess the status of the vaccine candidate, which is being manufactured by the Jenner Institute of Oxford University in partnership with AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharma company.

On Monday, both University of Oxford and AstraZeneca said that their vaccine was 90% effective in late-stage clinical trials, thus raising expectations for its arrival in India by this year end.

Source: Hindustan Times