Bharat Biotech coronavirus vaccine may have June 2021 launch

Bharat Biotech, which has received approval for late-stage human trials for its Covid vaccine candidate Covaxin, hopes to have it ready by June 2021.

The Hyderabad-based firm is planning to test over 20,000 volunteers across 12-14 states.

Covaxin, developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Virology, is an inactivated vaccine that is expected to work by injecting the “killed version” of the covid-19 virus into the body to develop an immune response.

Bharat Biotech plans to enroll 25,000 to 26,000 participants across the country, including Telengana, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Maharashtra and Bihar.

As of now Bharath Biotech and Serum Institute of India(SII) got the nod to conduct phase-3 trials. SII is said to be in the process of recruiting and vaccinating participants for the third phase of testing its candidate, Covishield.

Other vaccine candidates in the fray are those of Zydus Cadila, which is close to completing phase-2 trials of ZyCov-D, and of Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute, which will soon begin phase 2/3 trials of Sputnik V in collaboration with Dr Reddy’s.