Hyderabad,  Council of Scientific and Industrial Research's Director General Dr Shekhar Mande on Thursday lauded the efforts and contributions made by CSIR institutes in the fight against Covid-19 pandemic.

Addressing staff and students of the three CSIR institutes in Hyderabad - the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), he congratulated the institutes for their various contributions, as diverse as setting up Covid-19 surveillance strategies, affordable diagnostics, drugs and therapeutics development, hospital-assistive device development, and building supply chain and logistics.

He specifically cited how the CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratory used its expertise of building next-generation flights to build ventilators during the pandemic. They collaborated with CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology to understand how lungs and ventilators function, and together, built the first non-invasive ventilator in record time and is now widely used.

Mande also mentioned the praise CSIR-IICT received from policymakers for its contributions in developing an adjuvant for Covaxin, making it a totally indigenously built effective vaccine.

"No one group, one individual can take credit for the CSIR's contributions in fighting Covid-19. The entire credit goes to the CSIR as an organisation," he said.

Thanking the institutional leadership for going out of their way to ensure labs functioned every single day during this fight, he also reminded the unique placement of the CSIR in terms of its mandate.

"In the spectrum of science organisations in India that span from being strategic with pre-decided end points to others that perform blue-sky research and create quality human resources for future, the CSIR is sandwiched between the two," Mande said.

This, he added, makes it possible for the CSIR, as an organisation, to address fundamental unsolved questions as well as work tangibly towards societal good and create solutions to the pressing challenges of today, and helps in building viable bridges with the otherwise risk-averse industry sector.