Maharashtra running out of remdesivir supply after delay in advance orders for drug: Report

India supplier Hetero said it has so far supplied 20,000 doses, of which more than half went to Tamil Nadu, followed by private hospitals which took 7,000 doses, and the rest to other state hospitals.

Moneycontrol News

July 02, 2020 / 14:28 IST

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Public hospitals in Maharashtra, the state with the highest number of COVID-19 cases, are running low on Remdesivir supply as local authorities reportedly dithered on placing orders for the drug.

Private hospitals and the southern state of Tamil Nadu meanwhile are much better placed, having got the majority of the doses due to advance orders.

The experimental drug by US-based Gilead Sciences was approved for sale in India on June 22.

While Maharashtra was among the states that pushed for Remdesivir’s approval, tenders for the drug are yet to be processed, state government officials said as per a report by The Economic Times.

This has led to a grim situation, where even states with a significantly lower number of COVID-19 infections such as Karnataka and Assam – just 15 percent of Maharashtra’s active cases, are much better placed in terms of Remdesivir supply.

COVID-19 Vaccine

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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.

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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.

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Maharashtra running out of remdesivir supply after delay in advance orders for drug: Report

India supplier Hetero said it has so far supplied 20,000 doses, of which more than half went to Tamil Nadu, followed by private hospitals which took 7,000 doses, and the rest to other state hospitals.

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Maharashtra running out of remdesivir supply after delay in advance orders for drug: Report

India supplier Hetero said it has so far supplied 20,000 doses, of which more than half went to Tamil Nadu, followed by private hospitals which took 7,000 doses, and the rest to other state hospitals.

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