Adar Poonawalla
Vaccine for children above 3 years in next 6 months: Adar Poonawalla
New Delhi/UNI: Amid concern over the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 virus and vulnerability of children, Adar Poonawalla, Chief Executive Officer of the Serum Institute of India, on Tuesday said alongwith two other companies, SII has reached the trial phase of developing a vaccine for the children aged above three and it should be ready within the next 6 months.
“In the last 2 years of the pandemic, India is now better prepared to deal with such a catastrophe, and hopefully the worst is behind us all. With over a billion-dollar investment that has gone into developing and manufacturing the Covid-19 vaccine, the journey so far has given us several key lessons owing to the rapidly changing situation in accordance with the mutating virus,” said Poonawalla, at the CII Partnership Summit 2021 organised in association with Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).
The SII was working towards developing the vaccine booster shot for Omicron virus which is more effective, said Poonawalla.
He apprised that they “On the back of enough data, it is safe to say that booster vaccines are a proven strategy to get antibodies up to a great extent.”
With supply of the vaccines out matching demand globally, to keep up with the momentum, Poonawalla suggested that countries come together and form some agreement in order to prepare standard rules for clinical trials and manufacturing of the vaccines.
The SII CEO pointed out that multilateral organisations and policy makers should be able to identify and isolate the new mutations and find out the efficacy of vaccines against it, in a time bound manner.
The need for greater collaborations and action facilitated by multilateral organisations to be prepared for the COVID situation was also expressed by Ong Ye Kung, Minister for Health, Singapore at the CII Partnership Summit.
As economies like Singapore depend largely on connections with the world and are sustained with seaport and airport infrastructure, the Singapore Government will strive to keep the borders open for business and movement as it learns to live with COVID-19 as an endemic disease, the Minister said.
He suggested skills training and collaborating with India’s IT and healthcare sector as the way forward to further strengthen the India-Singapore relationship on healthcare related matters.
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