A Covid vaccine Mock drill has been planned to be conducted in four states Gujarat, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab.
These vaccine trials will be co-sponsored by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
The Serum Institute of India has already produced around 50 million dosages of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine ‘Covishield’.
The Pune based Serum Institute of India (SII) is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.
The drug regulator ICMR is considering three vaccines – AstraZeneca’s, Pfizer/BioNTech’s and one developed by a domestic company, Bharat Biotech,for emergency approval.
India has eight COVID-19 vaccine candidates under different stages of trials, including three indigenous ones.
These vaccines include the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine - Covishield, ICMR-Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, Russia’s Sputnik-V and Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D.
The others include Serum Institute’s NVX-CoV2373 and Geneva’s HGC019 and two unlabelled vaccines by Bharat Biotech and Biological E Limited.