Government Notifies Facilities in Pune And Hyderabad For Covid Vaccine Testing

Centre has notified two facilities in Pune and Hyderabad for Covid vaccine testing

To ramp up testing and quality control of Coronavirus vaccines in the country, the Centre has notified two testing facilities in Pune and Hyderabad for the purpose.

Department of Biotechnology, under the aegis of Ministry of Science & Technology has set up two vaccine testing facilities in its autonomous research institutes namely National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) in Pune and National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NIAB) at Hyderabad designated them as Central Drug Laboratories (CDL), for batch testing and quality control of vaccines.

The facility at NCCS, Pune, has now been notified as a Central Drugs Laboratory for testing and lot release of COVID-19 vaccines through a gazette notification .The facility at NIAB ,Hyderabad is likely to receive it notification shortly.

Currently, the nation has a Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL) at Kasauli, which is the national control laboratory for testing and pre-release certification of Immunobiologicals (vaccines and antisera) meant for human use in India.

Since the outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic, the Department of Biotechnology has been involved in vaccine development, diagnostics and testing, bio-banking and genomic surveillance.

The facilities in Pune and Hyderabad have been involved in many aspects of infectious disease related work in India, and have contributed to advancement of cutting-edge research output in areas of Biotechnology