Centre Sanctions Funds From PM CARES To Build Vaccine Testing Lab At Hyderabad

Union Minister of State (MoS) for Home G Kishan Reddy announced that the central government has authorized capital from the PM CARES Fund to establish a vaccine-testing laboratory in Hyderabad.

Reddy mentioned that enhanced attention towards the production of vaccines amidst the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the need of more number of vaccine-testing laboratories in the country.

Currently, there are only two such centres in India, namely: National Institute of Biologicals at Noida and the Central Drug Laboratory at Kasauli, Economic Times reports.

The minister said that funds were directed from the PM CARES Fund in March itself for setting up an additional couple of laboratories.

One of them will be at the National Institute of Animal Biotechnology, Hyderabad, under the Department of Biotechnology and another one at the National Centre for Cell Science in Pune.

The laboratory from Hyderabad will kick off its operations from the coming year onwards and it will expedite the comprehensive development of the pharma sector in the city as it already hosts several pharma majors along with research and development (R&D) institutes.

Furthermore, the centre will also assist in increasing the production of the much-necessary Covid-19 vaccines as well.