“India is ready for the future with a basket of vaccines. The expert committee has also approved the nasal vaccine. Just a drop in your nose and you are safe against Covid," Mandaviya said in Rajya Sabha, as quoted by HT.
World's first intra-nasal vaccine for Covid, iNCOVACC, developed by India has recently got approval from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO).
The iNCOVACC is a recombinant replication-deficient adenovirus vectored vaccine with a pre-fusion stabilized spike protein. This vaccine candidate was evaluated in phase I, II and III clinical trials with successful results.
This vaccine has been specifically formulated to allow intranasal delivery through nasal drops. The nasal delivery system has been designed and developed to be cost-effective in low and middle-income countries.
It was developed in partnership with Washington University, St. Louis, which had designed and developed the recombinant adenoviral vectored construct and evaluated in preclinical studies for efficacy.
Product development related to preclinical safety evaluation, large-scale manufacturing scale up, formulation and delivery device development, including human clinical trials were conducted by Bharat Biotech.
Meanwhile, Mandaviya will also hold a meeting with health ministers of states and Union Territories today, Friday, over increasing Covid cases in some parts of the world.
The minister said the focus is to ensure that no unknown variant of the virus enters India and at the same time, there is no impediment to traveling to other parts of the world, as per PTI reports.
"We are constantly monitoring the situation. There are no direct flights between China and India but people come via other routes," Mandaviya said.
China and some other countries are witnessing a surge in Covid cases. A large number of cases are being reported in countries including Japan, United States, South Korea, France, Greece, Italy.
