The Standing Committee on Science and Technology headed by Jairam Ramesh will hold a meeting on vaccine development for COVID-19 in a meeting scheduled for June 23.
Prof. K VijayaRaghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, Dr. V K Paul, Member, NITI Aayog and Chairman, National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC), and representatives of the Departments of Biotechnology and Scientific and Industrial Research have been called for the meeting.
The committee, sources said, was likely to discuss the vaccine shortage and fewer options in terms of vaccines. The slow roll-out of the vaccines will also be a point of deliberations. So far, India is trailing behind the world, with just 3.5% of the whole population receiving both doses of the vaccine.
The other subject on the agenda is the genetic sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and its variants. The delta variant of COVID-19 wrecked havoc in the second wave in India, causing more fatalities in a shorter period of time.
