Good News: India’s First COVID-19 vaccine “COVAXIN” Human Trials Start Well. Will the ICMR company Launch India’s First Coronavirus Vaccine by August 15?

Bharat Biotechnology International Limited (BBIL) has developed India’s first potential local (Covid-19) vaccine for coronavirus disease. The company said that the first phase of the test has begun on 375 people on July 15.

In the latest developments of India’s COVID-19 vaccine, PGI Rohtak started a human trial of Covaxin, a Bharat biotech International Limited and ICMR candidate vaccine. Minister of Health, Mr. Anil Vij, who belongs to Haryana, shared this news on Twitter. He also stated that the vaccine is well tolerated in subjects.

Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech, an Indian manufacturer of vaccines and biotherapies, is the first Indian COVID-19 vaccine who got an endorsement by DGCI (General Drug Administration of India).

Human trial with Corona vaccine (COVAXIN) of Bharat Biotech started at PGI Rohtak today. Three subjects were enrolled today. All have tolerated the vaccine very well. There were no adverse efforts.

— Anil Vij Ex – Home Minister Haryana, India (@anilvijminister) July 17, 2020

Hyderabad based company’s vaccine was developed in cooperation with the Indian Council of Medical Research and the National Institute of Virology.

“COVAXIN” Bharat Biotech’s Corona vaccine human trial started at PGI Rohtak. Three persons have enrolled. Everyone has tolerated the vaccine very well. There were no adverse endeavors, he tweeted.

The human trials of Covaxin were also conducted at AIIMS, Patna about three days ago. AIIMS Patna and PGIMS are amongst the 12 institutes which have selected for 1,126 participant vaccine candidate trial that is jointly developed by Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Virology and Bharat Biotech in Pune.

There are about six candidate vaccines from India, two of which have been approved for human trials, and the rest have been approved in preclinical trials. Meanwhile, Zydus Cladia, Ahmedabad-based pharmaceutical giant, had also got DCGI’s permission to conduct human trials of their vaccine candidate. The trials of the vaccine began on July 15.

These two vaccine candidates are India’s autochthonous, home-grown jabs against the coronavirus pandemic. The strand separated by ICMR’s NIV Pune was handed over to Bharat Biotech to develop a vaccine.

12 hospitals in certain sectors of the country are conducting this test. Hospitals, where vaccine trials have started, include, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi, King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam, AIIMS Patna, Jeevan Rekha Hospital in Belgaum, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Rohtak, Rana Hospital in Gorakhpur, Kalinga Hospital in Bhubaneswar, Prakhar Hospital in Kanpur and a hospital in Goa, Gillurkar Multispeciality Hospital in Nagpur, Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad, SRM Hospital in Chennai.

ICMR wrote a letter to these 12 research institutions who are conducting human trials of the Covaxin vaccine, instructing them to obtain the necessary endorsements from the internal committee and to recruit personnel for clinical trials by July 7.

In the letter, he instructed the company and key researchers of 12 sites to expedite the trial in order to launch the vaccine before August 15. The letter caused widespread criticism for its presumption of positive results in clinical research and a flouting view of other ethics norms.

Since then, the agency seems to have backtracked from the deadline and justified the letter by declaring that this was just to expedite the trial by discharging the red tapes section that is typically convoluted or tedious.

Due to the intervention of ICMR, India’s largest biomedical research agency, and a controversial letter written by ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava earlier this month, Bharat Biotech’s vaccine candidates have received more attention.

The country’s novel coronavirus cases have broken the 1 million mark today. However, currently, there are barely 360,000 active cases of COVID-19 in India. Globally, more than 13.7 million cases have been infected with the virus and tested positive for it. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 150 candidate vaccines are under development worldwide and approximately 23 candidate vaccines around the world are under human trials. Furthermore, there are no approved vaccines or specific drugs for commercial use for pandemic coronavirus contaminations.