India’s first Covid-19 vaccine candidate will be test on over 1,100 human volunteers in two phases

The human trial of Covaxin, India’s first Covid-19 vaccine candidate, began last week, a report in LiveMint said.

According to the report, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Patna and Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Rohtak have begun the trial of the vaccine.

It has been developed by Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech with National Institute of Virology (NIV) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). It has been developed from a strain of the novel coronavirus isolated by NIV, Pune, the report said.

Once this vaccine is injected, it cannot infect the human since it is a killed virus. It has also been tested on animals to ensure safety.

According to the report, Covaxin will be tested on over 1,100 people in two phases. Bharat Biotech has planned to enroll 375 people in the first phase and depending on the results of the first trial, the company plans to enroll 750 people in the second phase of trial.

"Three subjects were enrolled today. All have tolerated the vaccine very well. There were no adverse efforts," Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij was quoted as saying.

"From India's perspective, we have two vaccine candidates. We are trying all out efforts to fast-rack it and it is the moral duty that there should not be a delay not even by a day for regulatory clearances for these vaccines so that we can break the transmission of the virus as soon as possible," said ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava, according to the LiveMint report.