The Ethics committee of AIIMS has given its permission to conduct human trials of Covaxin – the indigenous vaccine developed to give protection against coronavirus.
The hospital will start the screening process of candidates from Monday.
In an interview given to NDTV, Dr Sanjay Rai, Professor at the Centre for Community Medicine at AIIMS, noted:
The AIIMS Ethics Committee gave its approval for starting the human clinical trial of the indigenously developed Covaxin today. Healthy volunteers having no comorbid conditions and without a history of COVID-19, aged more than 18 years and less than 55 years, would be eligible to participate in the randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial.
While adding:
Few volunteers have already registered for the trial. We would start the screening of the individuals and evaluate their health condition from Monday onwards before vaccinating them.
AIIMS is one of the 12 sites which have been selected for the phase 1 and 2 of human trials, by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR).
In the first phase, a total of 375 volunteers will be participating, out of which, 100 can be from AIIMS.
Covaxin has been developed by Bharat Biotech, a Hydeberad-based firm, in collaboration with National Institute of Virology and ICMR.