Recently, officials reported that the second phase of the human clinical trial of the ‘Covaxin’ (India’s indigenous COVID-19 vaccine) will begin at IMS and SUM Hospital, where preparations are currently underway.
The hospital is one of the 12 medical centres that are approved by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) for conducting the human clinical trial of the Covaxin (Covid-19 vaccine developed by Hyderabad based Bharat Biotech).
Dr E Venkata Rao, Principal Investigator of the trial at Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital said, “The Phase I of the trial is still continuing as we are planning for the start of the Phase II trial shortly. The blood samples collected from the volunteers who received the vaccine were to ascertain how effective the vaccine was in terms of the level of antibodies developed”.
The vaccine has been proven successful in phase one clinical trial and also showed no side effects on participants.
According to Dr Rao, “There was a lot of enthusiasm among people to be part of the second phase of the human trial”.
He informed that the interested volunteers will have to visit http://ptctu.soa.ac.in to register themselves for participation in phase second trial of the vaccine.
Presently, over seven COVID-19 vaccines are at various stages of development in the country. While two of them have entered the race of conducting human clinical trials, after getting stipulated approval from the country’s drug regulator.
Recently, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan commented that coronavirus infection cases in the country will likely be under control by Diwali this year.