After facing backlash for fast-tracking coronavirus vaccine launch, ICMR has now come under fire from AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria, who termed the August 15 launch deadline for Covaxin, India's coronavirus candidate vaccine, "unrealistic".

The director of AIIMS said, “India is close to coronavirus peak, but the deadline is unrealistic and even the ICMR is aware of that”. He also explained the stages of vaccine development, remdesivir and its efficacy and symptoms home isolation patients should look out for. Dr Guleria also talked about COVID-19 in children and how it can affect them.

However ICMR had on Saturday issued a clarification on fast-tracking the launch of Covaxin, India's Covid-19 vaccine candidate being developed by Indian company Bharat Biotech International Ltd. Defending the move, ICMR had said that the decision to expedite clinical trials was taken in the larger public interest and that the process of developing the vaccine was in line with the globally accepted norms.

"In the larger public health interest, it is important for ICMR to expedite clinical trials with a promising indigenous vaccine. Faced with the unprecedented nature of the Covid 19 pandemic, all other vaccine candidates across the globe have been similarly fast-tracked," ICMR had said in a press release.

The medical body had also received backlash after its Director-General Balram Bhargava wrote to the 12 institutes selected for conducting human trials for Covaxin, asking them to expedite the human trials and set the deadline to launch the vaccine on August 15.

Several other experts and doctors had also said that the six-week deadline for a candidate vaccine was "unrealistic" and Opposition also said that the ICMR was compromising with the safety of people by setting the Independence Day launch date to help Prime Minister Narendra Modi score political points.