Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched “Drug Discover Hackathon,” a laudable initiative under the office of Principal Scientific Advisor, aimed at producing an anti-coronavirus drug. Researchers from across the world in the fields of academia and industry can participate and collaboration is permitted.

Meanwhile, a team of eminent doctors and scientists has developed an ayurvedic drug and protocol and submitted everything as per specification to the Ayush Ministry with a request to take up the drug for clinical trial on 15 April. Without clinical trials, the drug cannot be administrated to coronavirus patients.

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Led by Dr PR Krishnakumar, South India’s leading ayurvedic scholar, the team included Dr Rama Jayasundar of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi; a physicist-turned ayurvedic researcher, Dr CV Krishnaswamy, Tamil Nadu’s leading physician and researcher in diabetology, and Prof BM Hegde, internationally reputed cardiologist and former Vice Chancellor of Manipal Medical University.

Krishnakumar had been honoured by the nation with Padma Shri while Hegde, author of the seminal book, What Doctors Dont Get to Study in Medical School, is a Padma Bhushan. Indian origin ayurveda is 5,000 years old and is called the “Mother of all Healing.”

The team that worked night and day to bring out the anti-corona drug is still waiting to hear from the Ayush Ministry even as India on Sunday reported the highest single-day spike of 7,097 Covid-19 cases, taking the overall tally 138,482. India now has the 10th highest number of corona cases worldwide.

Attempts to elicit information about the ayurvedic drug’s clinical trials from Shripad Yesso Naik, Minister of State in the Ayush Ministry, produced no results. Dr Rajesh Kotecha, eminent ayurvedic physician who is secretary to the Ayush Ministry, also ignored queries about the status of the new drug.

Harsh Vardhan, Union Health Minister, dedicating a Covid-19 health centre at the Chaudhary Brahm Prakash Ayurved Charak Sansthan in Najafgarg on Sunday said knowledge of ayurveda would prove beneficial to the people all over the world in combating Covid-19.

Of the 201 patients being treated at the CBPACS centre, 37 have been cured, 100 have been advised home quarantine and 19 shifted to speciality hospitals. There has been no casualty at the centre.

Meanwhile, the Madhya Pradesh government has sent anti-coronavirus drugs produced by Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Research Institute, Haridwar, for clinical trials to Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College in Indore, according to its dean, Jyoti Bindal.

Covid-19 pandemic has given a rare opportunity to India to showcase the potential of ayurvedic system of medicine to the world, but bureaucracy in the Ayush Ministry seems to be caught up in the nationwide lockdown.