Moscow, June 1 (Agency) Japanese government on Tuesday approved a plan to accelerate local development and production of home-made COVID-19 vaccines, which will bring them at par with Europe and America, the NHK news agency reported. The newly adopted plan, which requires high-level research and development as well as government guidelines to allocate funding strategically, aims to bring Japan at par with other developed societies like America and Europe in terms of vaccine production. The experimental studies of the vaccines shall be spread across Asia to allow large-scale clinical trials in the region.
While addressing the health care panel, the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, urged all ministers to work under a unified strategy to strengthen the nation’s response to infectious diseases like Coronavirus. Suga will be explaining the outline of the production strategy in an online summit on vaccines co-hosted by Japan and international group promoting COVID-19 vaccination in developing nations on Wednesday. Japan’s vaccination campaign started in February with BioNTech/Pfizer shots and later AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines. With this latest plan toward domestic development of vaccines, the country aims to be self reliant in its response to coronavirus pandemic.