“”"

There is an indirect method we can use to judge if public money was involved in the research leading to the development of the vaccine. We could review the declarations of financial support in the research papers published on the vaccine till now. According to Bharat Biotech, there have been six international peer-reviewed journal publications on Covaxin till now. A summary of these six publications and the financial acknowledgements listed are given in the table below.

On reviewing these papers, we find that in four out of the six papers, financial support from either the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare or the National Institute of Virology, Pune, or the ICMR is clearly acknowledged. All the six papers were co-authored by scholars from Bharat Biotech and the ICMR/National Institute of Virology. In five of the six papers, the ICMR Director General Balaram Bhargava was himself a co-author.

These six papers did not provide any information on the amounts involved in the financial supports. However, they do provide unequivocal evidence that public money was indeed spent towards the research that resulted in the successful development of the vaccine

“”"