India begins commercial export of Covid-19 vaccine with Brazil, Morocco 2 minutes read
New Delhi, Jan 22 (efe-epa).- India on Friday sent the first shipments of Covishield to Brazil and Morocco after authorizing the commercial export of the locally-manufactured coronavirus vaccine.
The Indian external affairs ministry confirmed to EFE that the government had approved the commercial shipments of the vaccine, developed by UK-based drugmaker AstraZeneca and Oxford University and produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine maker.
Anurag Srivastava, the ministry spokesperson, said contractual supplies of Indian vaccines were being taken to Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Brazil, Morocco, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
The newly declassified 2018 Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific, made public by the Trump administration in its last week in office, underlines how prominently what it describes as “strategic competition between the U.S. and China” set Washington’s regional policy over the past four years, as well as President Donald Trump’s mixed record in effectively addressing that challenge.
At its meeting on textbook reforms on Wednesday, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education heard presentations from right-wing organisations and educationists, including the man at the centre of a debate on the “saffronisation” of textbooks under the Vajpayee government. They argued that Mughal history is being whitewashed in Indian textbooks, and crowding out space for history from the Vedic era.
NEW DELHI: As the new UK variant of coronavirus worries governments, India is keenly looking at the mutation in order to find out to what extent the altered virus can influence transmission, clinical outcomes, severity and the need for specific public health intervention measures.
TOIspoke to experts to understand what genome surveillance is and how it assesses impact of virus mutations.
For genome sequencing, a swab sample collected through RT-PCR is used to amplify the virus to identify whether it is different from the previously detected ones. Genomic surveillance is resource intensive as it costs around Rs 8,000-10,000 to sequence one sample. Besides, it takes around 24 hours for a result, whereas analysing or comparing with other strains to understand the change and impact takes up to two days.
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Vice President lauds ICMR and Bharat Biotech collaboration for COVID vaccine
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Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu with Bharat Biotech CMD Krishna Ella and Joint MD Suchitra Ella at his residence in Hyderabad.
Vice President lauds ICMR and Bharat Biotech collaboration for COVID vaccine
Bharat Biotech’s senior leadership on Friday called on Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu and updated him on the status of COVID-19 vaccine candidate Covaxin being developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV).
The discussion revolved around the status of the indigenous vaccine and plans to make it available in the country and rest of the world, said an official release on the interaction Mr. Naidu had with Bharat Biotech CMD Krishna Ella and Joint MD Suchitra Ella at his residence in the city.