The office of the PSA has played a coordinating role for government ministries/departments, scientific institutions, academia and enterprises to accelerate decisions on dealing with research and innovation-based actions to meet the COVID-19 challenges. Support has been provided to enable national, state and local bodies towards evidence-based action and to mobilise the scientific community for providing targeted solutions. To this end, the O/o PSA constituted the Science & Technology Empowered Committee for COVID-19 on 19 March 2020.
The committee was chaired by Prof Vinod Paul, Member, NITI Aayog and Prof K VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser, and is responsible for coordination amongst science agencies, scientists, industries, and regulatory bodies, and to take speedy decisions on research and development related issues to tackle the Sars-Cov-2 virus and the COVID-19 disease. The committee has worked towards implementation of scientific solutions to meet COVID-19 related challenges. It has enabled ICMR to issue the required notification allowing institutes under DST, DBT, CSIR, DAE, DRDO, and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to self-assess and prepare their BSL labs for research and testing of coronavirus through the standard and rigorous protocols as stipulated by ICMR.
A mechanism has been evolved between various STI funding ministries/ departments/agencies to ensure a rapid and coordinated mechanism to support various research and innovation projects for:
(i) a Task Force on Repurposing of Drugs (TFORD-COVID19) has been constituted to look into the status of scientific evidence, technology readiness levels, the status of IP, manufacturability in India etc. In-depth information on various drug candidates will help to allow informed decision making. The regulatory/legal processes are also being addressed.
(ii) mathematical models to track the disease spread and models to predict the medical equipment and auxiliary requirements of the COVID-19.
(iii) manufacturing of test kits, ventilators, PPE in India. The Government of India on 29 Mar 2020 constituted 11 Empowered Groups of Officers, under DM Act 2005, to engineer a well-planned & coordinated emergency response to ensure the health & economic security of millions of Indians from COVID19 outbreak. These Groups are empowered to identify problem-effective solutions therefor; delineate policy; formulate plans, and take necessary steps for effective and time-bound implementation for these. PSA is a member of the Group responsible for coordinating with the private sector, NGO, International bodies for response-related activities.
Website link: http://psa.gov.in/
