Bharat Biotech Starts Human Trial For COVAXIN, India's Indigenous Covid-19 Vaccine Candidate

Doctors at the Rohtak PGIMS said that three volunteers were administered the Covid-19 vaccine as part of the first phase of the clinical trial.

PTI

Updated on: 18 July 2020 10:59 am

The human trial of Bharat Biotech's anti-COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin began at Rohtak's Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences on Friday, Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij said.

The minister also said the vaccine has been administered to three persons who have shown no adverse effect to it.

"Human trial with Corona vaccine (COVAXIN) of Bharat Biotech started at PGI Rohtak today,” tweeted Vij, who is also the Home and Science & Technology minister.

“Three subjects were enrolled today. All have tolerated the vaccine very well. There were no adverse effects,” Vij further said in his tweet.

The minister later told reporters in Ambala that “more vaccine candidates will be enrolled for the trial in coming days”.

Doctors at the Rohtak PGIMS, meanwhile, told reporters that three volunteers were administered the vaccine as part of the first phase of the clinical trial.

They said the process might take six months, but over the next two-three months, the effect of the vaccine would be assessed from the antibodies generated and any adverse reaction caused, if any.

The volunteers are in the age group of 30 to 40 years.

The vaccine will now be administered to ten persons who like the three would be observed on a regular basis.

In the second phase, more vaccine candidates will be enrolled and the vaccine dosage would also be increased, they said.

Bharat Biotech got the country's drug regulator's approval to start clinical trials of its anti-Corona vaccine Covaxin recently.

There are over seven anti-corona vaccines at various stages of development in the country with two of them having received the drug regulator's go-ahead to start the human clinical trials of their vaccines.

Earlier on Wednesday, drug firm Zydus had said it has started human clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate ZyCoV-D. In this phase of trials, the company will be enrolling over 1,000 subjects across multiple clinical study sites in India, it had said in a regulatory filing.

Zydus had got the approval a few days after India's first indigenous COVID-19 vaccine candidate COVAXIN, developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research and National Institute of Virology, got the nod for human clinical trials from the Drug Controller General of India.