Vaccine testing, research facility to come up at RGCB, Kerala

A vaccine testing and research facility is coming up at the second campus of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) in Kerala. The centre will have a BSL 3 facility that is capable of handling airborne viruses like COVID-19. The facility will be the first of its kind in South India. This announcement was made by the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh who also informed that one lakh genome and DNA sequencing has been done for COVID-19 so far by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and 5 COVID-19 Biorepositories with 57,000 samples were made available to academia and industry for R&D and product development.