India tests first COVID-19 vaccine COVAXIN

Preliminary results of phase 1 clinical trials of the Bharat Biotech-ICMR developed the Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin, suggest that the vaccine is safe, Report says, citing The Economic Times. 

The vaccine is being tested on 375 volunteers who have enrolled at 12 sites in India. Two doses of the vaccine are administered to each volunteer.

“The vaccine is safe. We have not observed any adverse events in any of the volunteers at our site,” said Savita Verma, principal investigator leading the trial at PGI, Rohtak.

As of now, we know that it is safe. The second step is to understand how effective the vaccine is for which we have started collecting the samples,” added Verma. The investigators are expecting to finish the Phase I by August end.

“We are giving a second dose to the healthy volunteers, and so far, we have not seen anything unusual in patients.

Covaxin is India’s first vaccine candidate and developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).