By Raju Vernekar
Pune, Nov 28:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Zydus Cadila’s manufacturing facility in the Changodar industrial area, over 20 km from Ahmedabad, and reviewed the situation on Saturday.
Modi landed in Ahmedabad at about 9.30 AM, as part of his three-city visit to review coronavirus vaccine development work at facilities there. From the airport, he proceeded to pharma major Zydus Cadila’s plant. Wearing a PPE kit, he reviewed the vaccine development process at the Zydus Cadila research centre. The phase-I clinical trial of Zydus Cadilla’s vaccine candidate ZyCoV-D is over and the pharma company commenced phase-II clinical trials from August.
The PM Visited the Zydus Biotech Park in Ahmedabad to know more about the indigenous DNA based vaccine being developed by Zydus Cadila and said “I compliment the team behind this effort for their work. Government of India is actively working with them to support them in this journey”, PM’s office tweeted.
After that he flew to Hyderabad and landed at Hakimpet Air Force station. He reached Bharat Biotech’s facility at Genome Valley, around 50 km from Hyderabad at 1.30 PM. He visited Bharat Biotech facility and reviewed the development work of COVID-19 vaccine “Covaxin”. Bharat Biotech’s “Covaxin” is undergoing phase-III trials. Modi spent an hour in Hyderabad.
At the Bharat Biotech facility in Hyderabad, Modi was briefed about the indigenous COVID-19 vaccine. He congratulated the scientists for their progress in the trials so far. Their team is closely working with ICMR to facilitate speedy progress.
In the last leg Modi was scheduled to visit the Serum Institute of India (SII), which has partnered with global pharma giant AstraZeneca and the Oxford University for the vaccine.
Modi’s hour-long visit to SII is aimed at reviewing the status of the vaccine candidate for coronavirus infection and to know about its launch, production and distribution mechanism, he said.
In the meanwhile a visit by ambassadors and envoys from 100 countries to two pharmaceutical units -Serum Institute of India and Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd, in Pune, scheduled for December 4 has been cancelled, officials here said.
