India said Tuesday that it is in “communication” with Russia about Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine, but so far only the starting point of data exchange has been established.
“With regard to the Sputnik V vaccine, both countries are in communication. Some initial data has been shared. Detailed data is expected,” Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said at a news convention here. Russia’s Sputnik V, introduced this month, would be the first Covid-19 vaccine, the foreign clinical network is not yet convinced of its protection and efficacy.
A media segment reported monday that the Russian Embassy in New Delhi has contacted the offices of the government’s senior clinical adviser, K VijayRaghavan, biotechnology branch secretary Renu Swarup and India Medical Research Council Director-General Balram Bhargava on vaccine developments. through the Gamaleya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow. It also proposed sharing knowledge on the effectiveness and protection of trials conducted in Russia.
However, Bhushan refused to do so if India had expressed a willingness to manufacture the Sputnik V vaccine in the country.
Bhargava, who also provided at the meeting, said there were six primary Covid-19 vaccine initiatives. While 3 of them are in other stages of clinical trials, another 3 are in preclinical evaluation.
In response to a question about whether India is making a down payment to the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 vaccine initiative called the Covax Facility, Bhushan said that, to its knowledge, the Covax assembly on Monday did not ask member countries to make a payment.
The facility, created jointly through WHO and two foreign vaccine organizations CEPI and GAVI, operates under the precept of pooling the request for vaccines from member countries and the source of vaccines from others, he said. No fewer than 172 countries around the world have expressed interest in this agreement, which has already known nine candidate vaccines for Covid-19, adding the AstraZenec-Oxford University vaccine manufactured through the Serum Institute in Pune. Nine other candidate vaccines for Covid-19 are being evaluated for Covax.
With regard to the intensification of controls in the country, the head of the ICMR said that the number of checks carried out had increased from 10 in line with the day at the end of January to 10 lakh in line with the day of August. The number of indigenous kits has also helped to increase the number of controls in the country. Local kits helped reduce the charge for each of the RT-PCR controls, the benchmark, through six, from 2000 ₹ to just over 300 ₹, he said. .
Bhushan reported that the number of Covid-19 patients requiring oxygen assistance was 2. 7% of the total 7 lakh of active patients, while 1. 92% of patients were in the ICU and 0. 29% of patients on respirators.
Meanwhile, overall active infections in the country have decreased from approximately 6,400 in the last 24 hours to 7,04,348 with daily recoveries exceeding new cases. The number of active infections on Monday was 7. 10. 771.
As of Monday, approximately 61,000 samples tested positive for Covid-19, however, the number of recoveries was 66,550, with the exception of 848 deaths, resulting in a minimum in the total number of active cases.
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