India coronavirus dispatch: What does it take to make a Covid-19 vaccine?

ICMR's rush to produce Indian vaccine, providing minimum income for poor and vulnerable, and what do we know of the drugs used for Covid?- a roundup of articles on coronavirus

ICMR's rush to produce Indian vaccine, providing minimum income for poor and vulnerable, and what do we know of the drugs used for Covid? — a roundup of articles in Indian news publications on how India is dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Opinion
 

A safety net, post Covid: We need to provide minimum income for poor and vulnerable: This piece lays out three proposals which meet the objective of providing a minimum basic income to the poor and vulnerable groups in both rural and urban areas. These include cash transfers to all women above the age of 20 years; expanding the number of days provided under MGNREGA and a national employment guarantee scheme in urban areas. In all the three proposals, there is no problem of identification. Read more here.

ICMR's rush to produce 'Indian Vaccine' for Covid-19 suggests politics is driving science: Randomised controlled clinical trials are the gold-standard of modern medicine tests. Researchers evaluate whether a specific drug or combination of drugs is both efficacious and safe. Since a vaccine’s entry into the healthcare system depends on the results, researchers perform them with large cohorts of participants and over months, allowing room to check for side-effects as well. This is why ICMR’s, decision to conduct human clinical trials as well as manufacture the vaccine in a span of five weeks has raised questions about whether science is in command or politics. Read more here.

Longread
 

Towards universal health coverage? Over the past two decades, India has implemented a wide range of reforms in the health sector. These changes have made a limited contribution to making healthcare available and affordable for socially and economically marginalised groups. Where does India stand in terms of achieving UHC? What then needs to be done? Read more here.

 

Managing Covid-19 

43 per cent of Covid patients in India who died had no comorbidities: Over five months after the first Covid-19 case was reported in India, a government analysis of deaths reported until 2 July shows that just a little less than half of them have happened in young people — those below 60 years of age. In 43 per cent of the deaths, there were no known comorbidities. Read more here.
 

Possible lockdown in Hyderabad spurs hundreds to leave for Andhra: With another lockdown being speculated in Hyderabad, hundreds are heading to their native places in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Fearing that they may be stuck in the city, workers and businessmen are returning to be with their family. Using available modes of transport, people were seen leaving Hyderabad, which is witnessing a big spikes in Covid-19 cases. Though there is still no official word on re-imposing lockdown in Hyderabad. However, reports that the state cabinet will soon take a decision on this is triggering fear among migrants. Read more here.

Fighting stigma against frontline workers at the community level: Due to the nature of its transmission and limited treatment options, there is reigning fear and panic around the novel coronavirus among people across demographics in rural communities. Even after Covid-positive patients are being cured or released from quarantine and are medically not being considered a risk for spreading the virus, stories from the field indicate that migrants and recovered patients have been at the receiving end of community stigmatisation and ostracism. Read more here.

As Covid-19 disrupts education calendar, students swing between hope and anxiety: The Covid-19 pandemic emerged at the end of the academic year. Usually, states complete their Class 12 examinations by the last week of March and then start Class 10 board examinations. While 18 states got done with Class 12 board examinations by the time the lockdown came into force on March 25, they were unable to stick to the Class 10 schedule. As the lockdown got extended, states such as Telangana and Tamil Nadu cancelled the Class 10 examinations and said the students will be assessed according to their performance in past exams conducted by respective schools through the year. Read more here.

Understanding Covid-19
 

‘It’s unscientific’: Doctors entrusted with Covid-19 vaccine trial slam ICMR’s August 15 deadline: Four days after India’s first indigenous vaccine candidate for Covid-19 was granted approval for human clinical trials by the drug regulator, the Indian Council of Medical Research on Thursday said that it wanted to “launch the vaccine for public health use latest by August 15”.

On July 2, the council’s director-general Balram Bhargava wrote to the 12 institutions participating in the trial to “fast-track all approvals”, adding that participants on whom the vaccine would be tested should be enrolled “no later than July 7”. Read more here.

What (and how long) does it take to make a vaccine; what’s the Covid timeline? The August 15 target for launching Covaxin, India’s Covid-19 vaccine, is being described as a fast-track effort. This is because the development of a vaccine is usually a long, uncertain process. It is also expensive, with funding playing an important role. There is no fixed period but the process can typically run into decades — and still yield no results. For instance, after three decades of research, the vaccine for HIV is still in phase III of clinical trials. One of the fastest developed vaccines is the one used for mumps, which received approval in four years after trials began in 1963. Read more here.

What do we know of remdesivir, favipiravir, dexamethasone and other drugs used for Covid?
 

Six months after the World Health Organisation received the first reports of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in China, the Covid-19 pandemic has claimed over 500,000 lives worldwide and over 17,000 in India. The hard reality, the WHO said, is that the pandemic is nowhere close to being over. With a vaccine still at least months away, the focus is on a few treatments that have shown encouraging results in clinical trials. Read more here.