Hyderabad: The country’s first potential COVID-19 vaccine has received the green light from Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for Phase I and II human clinical trials.
The trials will begin across the country in July.
The vaccine, COVAXIN, has been developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, in association with Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). It is an inactivated vaccine created from a strain of the infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The vaccine has shown promising results in preclinical studies, demonstrating extensive safety and effective immune responses.
Globally, AstraZeneca’s vaccine followed by Moderna’s are in the lead with the latter scheduled to conduct Phase III trials from mid-July.
AstraZeneca, which has developed the vaccine with the help of researchers at the University of Oxford, has started large-scale mid-stage human trials.
China too has developed a vaccine in association with CanSino Biologics, which shows promising results in early clinical trials.
