The Centre on Sunday has put a ban on the export of anti-viral drug Remdesivir as the nation witnessed a sudden upsurge in the Covid-19 cases in the past few weeks. The Indian government has said in a statement to halt the export of Remdesivir injection and Remdesivir active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) till the pandemic situation normalizes in the country.
A statement issued by the Centre read, "India is witnessing a recent surge in Covid cases. As of April 11, there are 11.08 lakh active Covid cases and they are steadily increasing. This has led to a sudden spike in demand for injection Remdesivir used in the treatment of Covid patients. There is a potential of a further increase in this demand in the coming days."
Presently, seven Indian companies have licensed agreements with Gilead Sciences (US) to produce the drug in the nation for emergency treatment. The Indian companies have the capacity of producing at least 38.80 lakh units per month.
This step has been taken by the government to ensure that maximum people can get Remdesivir when need be. It has also asked anti-viral drug manufacturers to project the details of their stockists and distributors on their website. For this, the drug inspectors and other officers have been entrusted to verify stocks, stop hoarding, and black marketing along with malpractices.
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The government said, "The Department of Pharmaceuticals has been in contact with the domestic manufacturers to ramp up the production of Remdesivir."
Notably, Remdesivir is an investigational therapy listed by the National Clinical Management Protocol for Covid-19 due to which it is essential to make collaborative decisions.
"The states and UTs (Union Territories) have been directed that all these steps must be disseminated to both public and private hospitals, and compliance should be monitored," the Centre said.
In the past few weeks, several states including Punjab, Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra have been reporting a high number of infection cases on daily basis and it has forced the respective governments to impose a micro lockdown in few areas. Apart from this, Covid- 19 vaccine drive is running at a good pace, however, there have been complaints from several states of vaccine scarcity.