The one-day visit, organised by the MEA, will see them visit 2 institutes -- Serum Institute of India and Gennova Biopharmaceuticals.
Several foreign envoys will be visiting Pune on December 4 to see India's COVID vaccine development programme. The one-day visit, organised by India's ministry of external affairs, will see them visit two institutes -- Serum Institute of India and Gennova Biopharmaceuticals.
The visit is one of the key outcomes of foreign secretary Harsh Shringla's meet with the envoys earlier this month in Delhi. On November 6, Shringla, along with Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, Prof K Vijay Raghavan, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Dr Renu Swarup, Secretary, Department of Science & Technology, Ashutosh Sharma, briefed more than 190 heads of diplomatic missions on India's action on COVID pandemic.
The Serum Institute is involved in the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine against COVID, while Gennova is working on an mRNA-based vaccine.
PM Modi during his virtual meet with Chief Minister earlier this week said, "work on vaccine research is almost at the last stage both in the country as well as in the world" and the "Indian government is keeping a close eye on each and every development and we are in touch with everybody", pointing out, "it is not yet decided whether there will be one, two or three doses of vaccine or what will be its price."
India is expected to be a major centre of global COVID vaccine manufacturing and supply. Amid the COVID pandemic, India has emerged as the Pharma capital of the world supplying medicines such as HCQ, Paracetamol to more than 150 countries.
On the vaccine development programme, New Delhi has organised training programmes on clinical trials for neighbouring countries in which nearly 90 experts from eight countries participated.
It has sent aid, in terms of food and medicines to five Indian Ocean countries -- Maldives, Mauritius, Madagascar, Comoros and Seychelles and four African countries -- Sudan, South Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea.
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