Prabha Raghavan

In Maharashtra, four of the sites will be in Pune, two in Mumbai and one each in Nagpur and Wardha. Two sites will be in Chennai, while Visakhapatnam, Mysore, Jodhpur, Patna, Chandigarh, New Delhi and Gorakhpur will have one site each for the trials.

Several experts said the move appeared to be either posturing by Trump before the presidential election in November, or to be targeted essentially at China which, unlike India, is a larger exporter of key drug ingredients.

The US is the largest market for India’s pharmaceutical products. It is said that every third pill sold in America is made in India.

InterGlobe Aviation, the parent company of IndiGo, reduced its employee costs by 14.8% during the quarter, compared with the same period last year, while net revenues from operations fell 92% year-on-year during the quarter.

The move comes at a time when various drugmakers and vaccine firms have received approvals to either conduct clinical trials or launch their products in the country for use in the battle against Covid-19.

The agreement will give SII exclusive right to supply the vaccine in India, and non-exclusive rights, “during the pandemic period”, in all countries except those designated by the World Bank as “upper-middle or high-income” countries.

From food to aviation, and IT to hospitality, the decimation caused by the economic distress is echoing across the services sector, which is estimated to employ over 33 per cent of the employed population and contribute over 55 per cent to the GDP.

Countries like the US and UK have not only inked purchase agreements worth billions of dollars for vaccine candidates currently in late stage human clinical trials, some have also funded research and development for potential vaccine candidates.

In clinical trials for any new drug or vaccine, the third phase of testing looks for the effectiveness of the product in thousands of participants. India has the second largest population in the world, making it crucial for this demographic to be represented in these trials.

Vaccine development is a complex, time-consuming, resource-intensive process, and the chances of success are extremely low.

A key bellwether of activity in the manufacturing sector slipped in July after two months of steady growth reflecting the adverse impact of localised lockdowns by states to fight the surging Covid curve.

SII, the world's largest maker of vaccines, has a tie-up with AstraZeneca, the Swedish-British pharma giant, to manufacture the Covid-19 vaccine for low- and middle-income countries.

Why has the coronavirus pandemic spawned one of the hottest vaccine races in history? The Indian Express delves into the details.

Now that the chief of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation has signed off on the proposal, as confirmed by the health ministry Monday, SII will be able to kick-off the trials here, effectively putting it ahead in India’s own race for a Covid-19 vaccine.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, that causes COVID-19, does not replicate in embryonated eggs, according to a study published in the Euro Surveillance journal.

TV Import Restrictions: The move is especially expected to wean India off its import dependence on China for various electronic goods. The Indian Express takes a look at the decision and what this will mean for consumers.

The development comes three days after the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) for Covid-related therapies on Tuesday recommended amendments to Serum’s earlier protocol to conduct the trials here.

According to minutes of a meeting held by the Subject Expert Committee for Covid-19 on Tuesday, Serum has been told to submit a “revised protocol” for evaluation.

The project, a national clinical registry, will also serve as a crucial platform to conduct clinical trials to study the effectiveness of newer therapies being used as part of treatment for this disease.

Serum Institute of India has a tie-up with AstraZeneca and is expected to produce around a billion doses of the vaccine for low- and middle-income countries next year.

Globally, the non-replicating viral vector-based vaccine from Oxford-AstraZeneca and one inactivated alum platform from SinoVac are the leads being in Phase III.

Locating the right volunteers — who have not been infected with Covid-19 earlier, are not asymptomatic and are healthy — has been a problem in conducting clinical trials.

Clinical trial sites studying the safety and effectiveness of Covaxin were recently given permission by the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) to continue recruiting participants for the trial after it reviewed data from the first 50 participants that were vaccinated, they said.

On Saturday, the Pune-headquartered firm approached the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) with its application to conduct late stage clinical trials for the vaccine candidate, said a senior government official in the know.