There could be a lot of opportunities for India's institutes of science and technology that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic throws up. Minister for Science and Technology Dr Harsh Vardhan had a videoconference with heads of various verticals under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on Sunday.
Harsh Vardhan took stock of the various research activities that are being undertaken on a war footing to help the country manage various aspects of the crisis. “These are times of war, deliver solutions before the war ends, not a routine research project,'' the minister exhorted the scientific community, pointing out that the pandemic would give a boost to the country's resilience and self-reliance and enhance indigenous capacities in developing critical care equipment.
Harsh Vardhan pointed out that institutions had already stepped up developing and manufacturing personal protective equipment (PPE) and while India was importing a lot of these in the past, after the pandemic, India's domestic production would cater to the Indian market. “There are already 40 manufacturers today; post COVID-19, we may not need the help from outside,” the minister said.
CSIR chief Shekhar Mande said they have set up a core strategy group under which there are five verticals for COVID-19—digital and molecular surveillance, raid and economical diagnostics, new drugs/repurposing of drugs and associated production processes, Hospital-assisted devices and PPEs and, finally, supply chain and logistic systems.
The various scientists who hooked up via videoconferencing told Harsh Vardhan of the various works being done under their institutes. Several institutes have incubation centres or tie-ups with start-up enterprises and these have already stepped up production of indigenous solutions like sanitisers made from natural products, which could be used in rural markets as well as promoted in urban ones.
Discussing the opportunity thrown up with the global demand for hydroxychloroquine, the scientists said that India was at present in a very good position with surplus stocks as well as raw materials. However, with the reagents for HCQ, as well as for other generic drugs being largely supplied by China—and gearing up for a possibility when the imports of reagents might suffer—the scientists said they were already working towards developing facilities towards producing the reagents, too, indigenously. This capacity building, too, would help in future self-sufficiency.
Mande flagged certain issues like the problem for getting reagents for making COVID-19 testing kits. He also said that small units working in sanitiser manufacturing needed excise permissions for procuring alcohol.
Several CSIR labs are involved in testing swab samples of patients, and some have started genetic sequencing of the virus, with a target of doing 500 sequencings in the coming weeks. Harsh Vardhan, himself a doctor, said that genetic sequencing was crucial in identifying host response and population vulnerability to the disease. He recalled how, towards the end of the polio eradication mission, genetic sequencing was used to establish the travel history of the polio virus, which was a great help in eradicating the disease.
