The letter from the Indian Council for Medical Research might have gone mostly unnoticed if it hadn’t included a date. The council, which i...
The letter from the Indian Council for Medical Research might have gone mostly unnoticed if it hadn’t included a date. The council, which is guiding India’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, was writing to the 12 institutions conducting human clinical trials for Covaxin, a vaccine jointly developed by ICMR itself and Bharat Biotech.
Writing on July 2, the council’s director-general Balram Bharghava told the 12 institutions to “fast-track all approvals”, including enrolling participants for the human trials within five days, adding that the vaccine was “the top-most priority” of the government.
Next: “It is envisaged to launch the vaccine for public health use latest by 15th August, 2020”, the letter said, adding “non-compliance will be viewed very seriously”.
Had that date – India’s Independence Day – not been included, the letter may have seemed just like another effort from the council to speed up vaccine development, an effort made by many countries around the world. But the date itself, as well as the absurd timeline it suggested, going from enrolling participants for human trials on July 7 to a vaccine for “public health use” by August 15, made it evident that the motivations were blatantly political.
‘Indian vaccine’
Naturally, the unrealistic timeline and the unabashedly political...
