Several Indian firms are in the process of developing a Covid-19 vaccine amid the pandemic

India will play a major role in the vaccine development given the country’s "great track record in low-cost drug manufacturing" said Nobel laureate Peter Charles Doherty in a LiveMint report.

"Given India’s great track record in low-cost drug and vaccine manufacture, we expect that India will be a major player. This is, after all, the fastest way to return global economic activity," Doherty was quoted as saying in the report.

Doherty won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1996 for his discovery of how the body’s immune system distinguishes virus-infected cells from normal ones.

Several Indian firms have joined the race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. One of them is the Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine maker by the number of doses produced and sold globally. Further, British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca Plc has joined Pune based SII to manufacture the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, the LiveMint report said.

As of now, two vaccine candidates are at phase I and II clinical human trials in the country. India's first COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin has been developed by Bharat Biotech, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and National Institute of Virology (NIV). It is known that the phase I trial of the vaccine has been completed and phase II will start soon.

Zydus Cadila developed COVID-19 vaccine ZyCoV-D commenced phase II clinical trials from August 6 as per the report.