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 the first phase of human clinical trials. Bharat Biotech, the Hyderabad based pharmaceutical company, is developing the vaccine in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research's (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV).

Volunteers across the country are undergoing assessment for all health parameters such as liver functions and infections and to check if they have COVID-19 infections as trials cannot be done on COVID infected people or even asymptomatic patients. After the assessment, the subjects would be cleared for small doses of the vaccine. The locations for the testing include New Delhi, Patna, Chennai, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Goa, Bhubaneswar, Rohtak, Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam among others.

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

"The fact that India joined the race to develop the COVID vaccine, that is important to us. We are working with three different types of technology. What has come out of the 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 the other viral vaccines, we use the same classical method so that it is robust and it is a reliable technology," Ella said.

Speaking about the phases of the trial, he said that even though cases are rising, there is no short cut for approving the success of the vaccine, adding that the patient's safety is the foremost. "It might get delayed by two, three months, doesn't matter, but let us have the best vaccine. Something that doesn't hurt people rather protects them. Viral vaccines take 15 days for the test, it is not like pharma where you do in 30 minutes. We are all working 24 hours, day and night, to see how we can save the country. It depends on the regulatory agency how they analyse and view the data," he added.

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

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