On a day Home Minister Amit Shah was admitted to AIIMS with post-COVID fatigue and bodyache, the Centre said the country’s medical fraternity was closely observing the aftermath of the disease in patients who have recovered. “It is a new experience, but we are watching it. Respiratory symptoms, immunological reactions in children and lung fibrosis are some of the symptoms that are being reported post the disease. We need to observe them scientifically. I wouldn’t like to go by anecdotal reports. Similar damage is seen in other infectious diseases also. However, it is not that serious in this case, as yet,” Dr. Vinod K. Paul, member, NITI Aayog, said at the weekly health ministry briefing on COVID-19 situation in the country.
On vaccine development, Paul said the government was in talks with leading domestic vaccine manufactures—Serum Institute of India, Pune; Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad; Zydus Cadila, Ahmedabad; Gennova Biopharmaceuticals, Pune; and Biological E, Hyderabad — and issues such as pricing, cold chain management, dosage were being discussed.
On August 17, the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration met representatives of these companies. The meeting was “mutually beneficial and productive”, the health ministry had said in a statement.
“It is still too early for fixing a price, but we are discussing the issue with manufacturers. As far as capacity goes, you would be pleasantly surprised at our manufacturing capacity. But we are asking companies as to how they can ramp up their capacities, and what support they need from the government,” Paul said.
At this stage, India is looking at three vaccine candidates that are promising, two of which are in phase 1 and phase 2 trials; phase 3 trials for the Oxford candidate are set to begin in a day or two, he said. However, Paul cautioned that there was a possibility that the candidates may not succeed and enthusiasm should be tempered until the results of phase 3 were out.
