30 Groups Working On Developing Covid-19 Drugs & Vaccine: Health Ministry

Across the world many researchers and institutes are racing to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. Ever Since the breakout of the novel disease, India is also making continuous efforts in developing cure and vaccine for COVID-19.

Amritsar: A migrant feeds his child before boarding a bus for Ludhiana to travel to their native places, during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, in Amritsar, Thursday, May 28, 2020. (PTI Photo)

New Delhi: The Health Ministry of India in a press briefing on Thursday said that science and technology is the frontline warrior in the battle against contagious coronavirus and India is near to winning the fight. Briefing the media over the development of drugs, vaccines and technologies for testing coronavirus, VK Paul, a member of Niti Aayog (Health) stated that the fight against Coronavirus will be won through vaccine and drugs.

“Our country's science and technology institutions, pharma industry, agriculture sector, Department of Biotechnology, IITs, DRDO institutions have come up very strong despite limited sources.” He went on to say that India is among the countries which has mastered in developing quick vaccines. “These drugs and technologies are used across world. We have even discovered solutions of utilising old medicines in developing new and better drugs,” Paul said, adding that same energy is being put in developing vaccine for Corona. Across the world many researchers and institutes are racing to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. Ever Since the breakout of the novel disease, India is also making continuous efforts in developing cure and vaccine for COVID-19. Unveiling India’s progress towards the same, Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to the Government of India Prof K. Vijay Raghavan told press that there are about a total of 30 groups in India. These include from big industries to individual academics and start-ups, who are trying to develop vaccines. Of these, around 20 are keeping a good pace.   Vijay Raghavan further told that there is no race. Rather there is enough space for everyone to contribute their researches and studies. "AICTE and CSIR have embarked on a drug discovery hackathon- this is a high-end hackathon where students are trained with information on how to do computational drug discovery," he added.  Elaborating about the RT-PCR tests, professor told that RT-PCR test is testing for the presence of the virus and is agnostic whether you have symptoms or not. Professor said that while we await drugs and vaccines, there are five things we need to do in order to win over COVID-19. "Hygiene, Decontamination of surfaces, Physical Distancing, Tracking and Testing. These are in our hands!"