New Delhi: Around 20 Indian research institutes including the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) are working overtime to prepare a vaccine for the treatment of the deadly COVID-19 infection.
According to the Secretary of Department of Biotechnology (DBT) Renu Swarup, the government has received over 7,000 tech-based proposals from across the country to fight coronavirus.
Swarup, as quoted in The Print said, “We are working on several aspects right now. First is scaling up the manufacturing capacity of those start-ups and incubators, who have made low-cost testing kits and ventilators. They got early approval from the NIV and ICMR also. Eight to nine companies are in the process of getting an approval for their kits and ventilators.”
“We are also supporting companies who got approval for commercial production of testing kits and ventilators. Besides, all IIT-incubators have been asked to focus on research and development of portable ventilators, on genome sequencing and on isolation of the strain of the novel coronavirus from blood samples,” she added
Portable ventilators and test kits
A COVID-19 infected person requires 3 to 4 week in recovering completely, with a 21-day ventilator support. If Covid-19 outbreak reaches the third stage in India, then availability of ventilators and testing kits will become extremely essential.
According to reports, IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Roorkee are trying their hand in making portable ventilators.
“We are also supporting three indigenous companies in scaling up their manufacturing capacity of providing ventilators at a fast pace. A Mysuru-based firm is also ramping up its capacity to make more ventilators. It is working with the NITI Aayog, DBT, DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) to manufacture more ventilators,” said Renu Swarup.
At present, India is has less than 1 lakh intensive care units and a bed ratio of 1:1,000.