Moneycontrol
HomeNewsBusinessITC setting up Rs 150 crore COVID-19 fund for underprivileged people
Trending Topics

ITC setting up Rs 150 crore COVID-19 fund for underprivileged people

The corpus is created to address and manage the challenges arising out of the adversity, a company statement said.

March 27, 2020 / 11:55 IST
Story continues below Advertisement

ITC Ltd on Friday said it is setting up a contingency fund of Rs 150 crore for vulnerable sections of the society in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

The corpus is created to address and manage the challenges arising out of the adversity, a company statement said.

Story continues below Advertisement

"This fund will be utilised primarily to provide relief to the vulnerable and most needy sections of the society who have been harshly impacted by the pandemic and have faced significant disruption in their livelihoods," it said.

In addition, the company said it will collaborate with local authorities to provide assistance to the district health and rural healthcare eco-system that reaches out to the weakest sections of the society.

COVID-19 Vaccine
Frequently Asked Questions

View more

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.
View more
+ Show