Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fly to Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune on Saturday to take stock of the development of the COVID-19
vaccine on the premises there.
Modi will visit the plant of the main pharmaceutical Zydus Cadila in Ahmedabad to obtain information on the development of its vaccine, said Gujarat’s Chief Deputy Minister Nitin Patel. The prime minister will arrive at the plant, located in the Changodar industrial zone, more than 20 km from Ahmedabad, around 9:30 a.m., an official said.
Tomorrow, PM @Narendra Modi will embark on a three-city tour to personally review the vaccine development and manufacturing process. You will visit the Zydus Biotech Park in Ahmedabad, Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad and the Serum Institute of India in Pune.
– PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 27, 2020
Zydus Cadila had announced that the phase I clinical trial of its vaccine candidate ZyCoV-D had ended and it has started phase II clinical trials as of August.
Modi will then head to Pune, where he will visit the Serum Institute of India, which has partnered with global pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford for the vaccine, a senior official said. The prime minister will arrive in Pune around 12:30 pm, he said.
Modi’s visit aims to review the status of the candidate vaccine for coronavirus infection and know its launch, production and distribution mechanism, he added.
The prime minister will then fly to Hyderabad to visit the facilities of vaccine manufacturer Bharat Biotech, where work is underway on producing India’s first indigenous Covid19 vaccine, Covaxin.
Modi will arrive at Hakimpet Air Force Station on an IAF flight from Pune in the afternoon and will go to the Bharat Biotech facility in Genome Valley, about 50 km from Hyderabad. Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin is undergoing phase 3 trials. The prime minister will fly back to Delhi in the evening after his one-hour visit to the facility.
Official sources said Modi will spend an hour at the facility. The Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin, which is being developed by Bharat Biotech, is now in phase 3 trials.
A recent official statement from the office of Telangana Prime Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao said that the prime minister held a video conference on November 24 with all the senior ministers in which he discussed the method related to the distribution and administration of the vaccine to people.
(With PTI inputs)
.
