“The Department of Biotechnology Government of India has partnered with Zydus to address rapid development of an indigenous vaccine for COVID-19 under the National Biopharma Mission. This partnership with Zydus is to serve the country’s need for a vaccine to fight the dreaded pandemic which has put a billion people at risk. Such research endeavours will help the country to develop preventive strategies for future disease outbreaks as well and exemplifies the government’s focus on creating an ecosystem that nurtures and encourages new product innovation to make real and measurable changes to issues most relevant to our society.

This is an important milestone for AtmaNirbhar Bharat as Zydus begins human clinical trials for the indigenously developed vaccine. We hope, that the vaccine continues to show positive outcomes as it has done so far in the pre-clinical phase where it was found to be safe, immunogenic and well tolerated. This will be a big leap forward for Indian scientific research.”

Dr.  Renu Swarup, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), New Delhi