India developing 7 more COVID vaccines: Harsh Vardhan

Union Health Minister HarshVardhan on Saturday said that the country is developing sevenmore COVID-19 vaccines and also working on further vaccinedevelopment to inoculate every citizen of India.

He said the Centre does not have any immediate plan tomake the vaccines available in the open market and a decisionwill be taken as the situation demands.

The COVID-9 inoculation process for people aged above50 will start in March, he told reporters.

''We are not dependent only on the two vaccines as thecountry is working on seven more indigenous vaccines.

''Simultaneously, we are also working on thedevelopment of more vaccines because India is a huge countryand we need more players and research to reach out toeveryone,'' he said.

Three of the vaccines are in the trial phase, two arein the pre-clinical stage, one is in phase 1 and another inphase 2, the Union health minister said.

''The COVID-19 inoculation process for people above 50years of age will start next month,'' he said.

''Presently, COVID-19 vaccines are being administeredon an emergency basis, under full observation and in acontrolled manner. If the vaccines are released in the openmarket, there won't be any control over them. The decisionwill be taken as the situation demands,'' he added.

Two COVID vaccines Covishield and Covaxin are beingadministered to healthcare and the frontline workers duringthe ongoing initial stages of the inoculation process.

Covishield, AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, has beendeveloped by the University of Oxford.

Covaxin is India's first indigenous COVID-19 vaccinedeveloped by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the IndianCouncil of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Institute ofVirology (NIV).