Bharat Biotech begins first phase of clinical trials for India's Covid vaccine 'Covaxin'

In a significant development, India's much-awaited COVID-19 vaccine has entered first phase of human clinical trials. Bharat Biotech, Hyderab based pharmaceutical company, is developing vaccine in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research's (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV).

Volunteers across country are undergoing assessment for all health parameters such as liver functions and infections and to check if y have COVID-19 infections as trials cant be done on COVID infected people or even asymptomatic patients. After assessment, subjects would be cleared for small doses of vaccine.  locations for testing include New Delhi, Patna, Chennai, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Goa, Bhubaneswar, Rohtak, Hyderab and Visakhapatnam among ors.

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Bharat Biotech got  Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) d on June 29 to go ahe with human trials. After DCGI's green signal, Chairman & Managing Director of Bharat Biotech, Dr Krishna Ella while speaking with Republic TV, h said that India is catching up in race to develop COVID-19 vaccine. However, recruiting around a thousand people is a 'Herculean task', he ded.

" fact that India joined race to develop COVID vaccine, that is important to us. We are working with three different s of techlogy. What has come out of data from Chinese companies is that - pure inactivated pure live vaccine is showing extremely good results. What we are following is a similar path but it is our own intellectual property. This vaccine I see as a good prospectus. It is an old classical method, it is a method proven successful in a lot of diseases - chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis, all or viral vaccines, we use same classical method so that it is robust and it is a reliable techlogy," Ella said.

Speaking about phases of trial, he said that even though cases are rising, re is short cut for approving success of vaccine, ding that patient's safety is foremost. "It might get delayed by two, three months, doesn't matter, but let us have best vaccine. Something that doesn't hurt people rar protects m. Viral vaccines take 15 days for test, it is t like pharma where you do in 30 minutes. We are all working 24 hours, day and night, to see how we can save country. It depends on regulatory ncy how y analyse and view data," he ded.

country is witnessing an alarming surge in COVID-19 infections, making new highs every or day. total tally of infected cases stands at 9,06,752, of which 3,11,565 are active cases while country has witnessed 23,727 fatalities due to virus. However, what comes as a piece of good news is recovery rate of country is improving at a faster rate. 5,71,460 have been recovered in country so far and recovery rate has surpassed 63 percent.

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