Indian companies working with American firms to develop COVID-19 vaccine

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that India and the US are working together to develop the COVID-19 vaccine. Although it wasn’t a surprise since the two countries have worked on stopping all kinds of diseases. Of course, this includes dengue, enteric diseases, influenza, and tuberculosis.

Half a dozen Indian companies developing COVID-19 vaccine

With India having the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines, half a dozen of firs have already started to develop vaccines against coronavirus. Serum Institute of India is one of those companies. Hailed as the world’s largest vaccine maker, they make 1.5-billion doses of vaccines every year with around 7,000 people working for the firm. They supply around 20 vaccines to 165 countries across the globe.

Indian companies working with American firms to create COVID-19 vaccine

They have a collaboration with an American biotech company, Codagenix. Setting to develop a “live attenuated” vaccine among the others being developed in other countries and by other companies. They create the COVID-19 vaccine, removing the harmful properties of a pathogen that keeps it alive. This weakens the pathogens which result in no or very mild disease.

Aside from Codagenix, Serum Institute of India has also partnered to mass-produce a vaccine being developed with the University of Oxford. UK government has backed this. With a genetically engineered chimpanzee virus, they would form the basis for the new vaccine. Although still risky, they will hold human clinical trials on Thursday, April 30. If all goes well, scientists hope to make at least a million doses by September.

COVID-19 vaccine won’t be available in the market any time soon.

Humans will have to live with the threat of coronavirus for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, they won’t guarantee that they could successfully create and develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Aside from that, experts have also warned that a coronavirus vaccine would elicit harmful immune responses, too. Developing a safe vaccine that can be mass-produced would be a time-consuming exercise that needs a lot of chemically and biologically testing before its release.