Patna AIIMS starts human trial of COVID-19 vaccine

The race is underway across the world to find a medicine or vaccines to fight COVID-19. Russia has already claimed to be the first country to successfully conclude human trials for the world’s premier COVID-19 vaccine. Back home, India has also begun the human trials of coronavirus vaccine. Hyderabad’s Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences had started the human trials with India’s first COVID-19 vaccine, COVXIN.

Following the trail, the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS),Patna has started the human trial of the vaccine starting from July 13. The trial will be conducted on 18 volunteers selected by the hospital authority.

Earlier, Bharath Biotech International Ltd and Zydus Cadila pharmaceutical companies indigenous developed prototype vaccines and has got the approval of Drug Controller General of India, for human trials. AIIMS Patna is one among the 12 institutes selected by ICMR to conduct the coronavirus trial.

The selected volunteers will first go through medical check-up and after analysing their reports they will further proceed for trial.

As per Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) guidelines, the first dose of the vaccine will be given to only those whose reports are good. After the first dose of the vaccine, the patient will be under doctor’s supervision for 2 to 3 hours after which they will be sent home. A total of three dosages of injection will be given to the patients to complete the trial process.

The ICMR said on Monday that a total of 2,19,103 samples have been tested for coronavirus in the last 24 hours. With this the total number of tests in India have reached 1,18,06,265.

ICMR is continuously scaling up its testing facilities for COVID-19 by giving approval to government and private laboratories. As of now a total of 688 laboratories across India have been given the approval to conduct tests for coronavirus including 480 government laboratories and 208 private laboratories’ chain.