NEW DELHI: The Government on Monday said the COVID war was far from over and stressed the need to continue practising COVID-appropriate behaviour by using masks, physical distancing and respiratory etiquette.
Apprising the Lok Sabha of India’s COVID strategy, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said as many as 40 lakh Indians with the potential of disease transmission had been kept under surveillance to break the chain of viral transmission.
“Community surveillance was initiated initially for travel-related cases and subsequently for cases being reported from the community by Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP). As on September 11, 2020, a total of about 40 lakh persons have been kept under surveillance and extensive contact tracing of all positive cases is regularly being undertaken through disease surveillance network so as to break the chain of transmission,” the Minister said moments before Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla asked him to lay on the table of the house the statement on the issue.
Vardhan said 13 clinical trials of repurposed drugs and harnessing of traditional knowledge using the modern medicine approach are underway to build a portfolio of therapeutic options for COVID-19 patients.
“Phase 2 clinical trial of immunomodulator Sepsivac has been completed successfully. Phase 2 clinical trial of the first-ever phytopharmaceutical ACQH is underway. One prophylactic trial of Aswagandha and three trials of Guduchi and Pippali; Yashtimadhu; and polyherbal AYUSH drug (AYUSH-64) are planned on moderately ill Covid19 patients,” the Health Minister said.
On the vaccine front, the Minister said an effective vaccine would be the sure-shot tool in the armamentarium against this disease.
“On this front, globally, there are around 145 candidate vaccines in the preclinical evaluation and currently 35 vaccines in the clinical trial. In India, a major focus has been on facilitating the development of COVID-19 vaccine. More than 30 vaccine candidates have been supported which are in different stages of development, and three candidates are in the advanced stage of Phase I/II/III trials. More than four are in the advanced pre-clinical development stage,” Vardhan informed the house.
The government has also set up Biorepositories which have collected more than 40,000 samples which have been made available to researchers and industry for developing diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.