Can India be a Saviour in this Pandemic?
Pandemics have recurred at irregular intervals since at least Ninth century AD. The last one was during 1918, a century ago, the deadliest event in human history, as the pandemic influenza appeared simultaneously around the globe and caused terrific mortality. The aftermath of this century-old pandemic leads to intensive research and development of vaccines for the protection of the next generations. 100 years may a landmark in the history of human civilization to redesign the concept of living in this earth through the reincarnation of a life-threatening virus, from which the whole world is trying to escape.
Amidst the pandemic wave gripping around the world, growing fear has also been propagating through our society along with the surge in COVID 19 cases. This Wuhan origin virus has created a severe devastating impact in the world especially in developing countries like India. The rapidly spreading and fastest-growing positive cases posed challenges to the world health organization as well in finding solutions to the life-saving mission of the entire human race. India being the second-largest populated country with insufficient health care facilities was in a boiling point for the government and people concerned about formulating strategical move for controlling disease transmission. But pandemic created more resilience and hope in India’s approach towards COVID research.
WHO confirmed the novel coronavirus on Jan 12 as a cause of respiratory illness as the disease was first reported to WHO on 31 Dec 2019, in a cluster of people in Wuhan city, China. After the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in China, India reported its first case of COVID-19 in Kerala by a native student who returned from Wuhan on Jan 30 tested positive which led a rise with the other 3 more cases by Feb 3 from Wuhan returned medical students. There was no significant rise in transmission observed in February. On 4th March,22 new cases were reported and the transmission rate grew further, after several people with travel history to affected countries and their contacts, tested positive. The first COVID-19 fatality was reported on March 12 in a 76-year-old man who has travel history to Saudi Arabia.
INDIA’S RESPONSE TOWARDS PANDEMIC :
Multiple strategies were promulgated by the central and state governments of India to control the transmission rate. Thermal scanning is used mandatary in airports and railway stations. When the developed countries have shown hesitation for the complete lockdown to curb the social wide spread of the virus, India went ahead with a complete lockdown as an emergency social prevention measure. In March 25th government of India announced a nationwide lockdown with a curb on air, land transportation as well functioning of shops and establishments which extended to 55 days which generated fear and panic among the vast majority of people living with marginal resources. By the end of July, India crossed 5 lakh cases, which stands the third number of confirmed cases in the world after the US and Brazil. By reaching more than 5 lakh cases the previous day, people are forced to go out into the market to buy essentials with fewer precautions to protect themselves. This virus is spreading in both cities and rural areas without any disparity. The whole trajectory of infection is rising. Many western countries like England responded and reacted to the situation strongly and able to reduce the transmission. Being the second-largest population and the third number of confirmed cases in the world, India placed its hope in the COVID vaccine and other preventive research.
PIONEERS OF COVID RESEARCH IN INDIA :
On 14 March India became the fifth nation to isolate the strain of novel coronavirus after China, Japan, Thailand, and the U.S as the scientists at the National Institute of Virology isolated the strain. This propelled NIV to get involved in COVID research.
At the beginning of the pandemic phase, our scientists focussed on increasing the capacity of testing and antigen kits along with treating Corona infected patients.
India is considered as the “pharmacy of the world” where 60 percent of Indian origin drugs have been utilized over the years. The Drug Controller General of India has granted approval for using the combination of Lopinavir and Ritonavir to ICMR. A combination of anti-malaria, anti-swine flu and anti-HIV drugs showed a resultant recovery of three patients in Rajasthan. ICMR recommended the use of Hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of high-risk cases. This resulted in high demand for India’s Hydroxychloroquine from the US and other countries.
Earlier most of the diagnostic kits were imported to India but ICMR canceled half a million COVID-19 antibody test kits from China as they were found default and inaccurate in its test results. From that moment, the relentless initiative of the scientific community in India paved a ray of hope in COVID research work.
Earlier for the clinical diagnosis of a novel coronavirus, real-time RT PCR was used as the frontline test for understanding the exposure of the population to COVID virus infections.
It was NIV at Pune, which has successfully developed the first indigenous antibody detection kit for COVID-19 which plays a critical role in surveillance for coronavirus infection. For antibody detection for COVID 19, NIV in association with ICMR developed and introduced IgG ELISA test COVID KAVACH ELISA. This test requires minimal biosafety and biosecurity requirements as compared to RT-PCR. The NIV has transferred the technology to Zydus Cadila for mass production of the ELISA test kit after the development. In May NIV introduced another rapid antibody test kit ELISA which is capable of testing 90 samples for a single run of 2.5 hours. ELISA is routinely used for the detection of HIV. The outcome is a cost-effective, sensitive, rapid, and large amount of samples that can be tested. The test also has the advantage of having much higher sensitivity and specificity as compared to the several rapid test kits which have recently flooded the Indian market.
RAY OF HOPE ON INDIAN HORIZON:
When the whole world went panic with a pandemic situation, vaccine research was still at its infancy during March, India took many different approaches to handle the surge in COVID transmission.
The apparent speed the Indian scientists in government organizations aim to test and approve a homegrown COVID 19 vaccine invited widespread criticism from within and out of the country on its ethical validity bypassing time-consuming human trial protocol before releasing it for the public domain.
Out of the six Indian companies on the race for developing a vaccine for COVID 19, the Government of India gave sanction to two of them to start phase 1 and phase 11 human clinical trials of their most advanced vaccines namely covaxin and ZyCov-D.
The role of India in pioneering the initiative to develop any relevant Covid-19 vaccine is on its pipeline and striving to bring out a markable revolution for an economically affordable and indigenously sustainable to reach the domestic population as well the global community irrespective of rich and poor.
The bright minds of our scientific community have been working day and night to develop vaccines rapidly as more than half a million have surrendered to the novel Coronavirus across the world.
Bharath Biotech International Limited took lead for developing an effective vaccine against COVID-19 disease along with ICMR and NIV. The combine would together use the strain of COVID-19 virus which was successfully isolated by NIV. The strain has already been transferred from NIV to BBIL’s facility in Hyderabad which is the only company in the developing world of having a biosafety level-3. Recently, BBIL had also received approval from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to develop human monoclonal antibodies to treat COVID-19 which would facilitate therapeutic treatment of COVID-19 wherein the antibodies developed would bind themselves to the virus cells and neutralize them.
Another vaccine candidate ZyCov-D, developed by a company’s Vaccine technology center in Ahmedabad, Gujarat from Zydus Cadila. They received the drug controller’s approval for human trials on July 2.
As per reports that emerged in July, ICMR was preparing to launch the BBV152 COVID vaccine or Covaxin, India’s first COVID-19 vaccine ls expected to be released on 15 August following its ongoing human trials in July. It is not sure about the final date of release since a controversy prevails on political reasons. In mid-July, Zydus Cadila too had followed with human trials of its vaccine named ZyCoV-D.
Starting from Spanish flu of the 20th century the world has witnessed several diseases outbreaks . Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, HIV, SARS, Swine flu, MERS, Ebola, and lastly COVID-19. Whatever may the ground reality in life-saving measures during a pandemic, the survival of the fittest is the reality. So let us strive the strength to be the fittest to win the battle against this evil virus till the rebirth of a savior in form of a vaccine to equip humanity to fight against the common enemy and celebrate the victory.
