India\'s first COVID-19 vaccine: Covaxin human trial starts well. Key updates

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India's first COVID-19 vaccine: Covaxin human trial starts well. Key updates

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread around the world, scientists and researchers are scrambling to develop a vaccine to protect millions of people from infection. The human trial of Covaxin, India's first vaccine candidate against novel coronavirus infection, has started this week. The vaccine has been developed by the Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) earlier approved the biotech company to initiate the phase I and II human clinical trials.

Here are the things that we know so far about India's first indigenous COVID-19 vaccine candidate:

1) Covaxin has been derived from a strain of the novel coronavirus isolated by the National Institute of Virology in Pune. Bharat Biotech developed an “inactivated" vaccine at its high-containment facility in Hyderabad. Vaccine that uses the dead virus are known as 'inactivated' vaccine.

2) “Once the vaccine is injected into a human, it has no potential to infect or replicate, since it is a killed virus. It just serves to the immune system as a dead virus and mounts an antibody response towards the virus," said the company.

3) Covaxin underwent pre-clinical testing on animals such as guinea pigs and mice to see if it is safe.

4) The human trials of Covaxin has begun at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna. AIIMS-Patna chose 10 volunteers to start the human trial of Covaxin.

5) According to several reports, the first first dose of the vaccine has been administered to the study participants. They will be given he second dose after an interval of 14 days. Once their schedule is complete, the volunterrs will be examined thoroughly for any after-effects of the vaccine.

6) The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has selected 12 sites to conduct the clinical trials of Covaxin in the first round.

7) The human trial of India's first vaccine candidate has initiated in PGI Rohtak today. "Three subjects were enrolled today. All have tolerated the vaccine very well. There were no adverse efforts," said Anil Vij, health minister of Haryana.

8) "India has a lot of capacity there — with the drug and vaccine companies that are huge suppliers to the entire world. You know, more vaccines are made in India than anywhere-- starting with Serum Institute, that's the largest," said Bill Gates.

Source: Livemint.com