The whole world is waiting with great anticipation for a ‘safe and effective’ vaccine against the new coronavirus. Currently, three candidate vaccines are in different stages of testing in India. Two homegrown candidate vaccines, Covaxin from Bharat Biotech and ZyCoV-D from Zydus Cadila have already started the phase II clinical trial. Another vaccine candidate, Covishield, developed by the University of Oxford, has recently started the phase II clinical trial in India. Vaccine maker AstraZeneca has signed an agreement with the Serum Institute of India to manufacture Oxford’s candidate COVID-19 vaccine for India and low-income countries.
When will a COVID-19 vaccine be available in India? Responding to this question, the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, said that a vaccine could be ready by the end of this year.
“We are not falling behind anyone around the world in our efforts to contribute to the COVID vaccine … In India we have around 7-8 vaccine candidates, three of them in the clinical trial phases and the rest in pre-clinical trials and by the end of this year we hope to be able to obtain a vaccine against COVID, “he said.
Here are the key updates from India’s COVID-19 vaccine trip
Covaxin, India’s first coronavirus vaccine, has been developed by Bharat Biotech developed by Bharat BioTech, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV). The clinical trial to verify the safety of the possible COVID-19 vaccine began in August.
“There were no ‘side effects’ in the phase I trial of Covaxin,” said Dr. E Venkata Rao, the trial’s principal investigator at the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, college of medical sciences.
ZyCoV-D, developed by Zydus Cadila, began its phase II clinical trials on August 6. “The company reports that the doses of the vaccine administered to healthy volunteers in the phase I clinical trial, which began on July 15, 2020, have been well tolerated,” said Cadila Healthcare.
“All subjects in the phase I clinical trial were closely monitored in a clinical drug unit for 24 hours after dosing for safety and for 7 days thereafter, and the vaccine was found to be very safe,” he said. the president of Zydus Cadila, Pankaj R Patel.
The Pune-based drug maker Serum Institute of India recently started the advanced clinical trial of the vaccine conducted by the University of Oxford. The vaccine manufacturer has selected 17 sites across the country for the trial. About 1,600 people between the ages of 18 and 25 will enroll in the clinical trial.
“The volunteers do not have pain, fever, injection side reaction or systemic illness after vaccination,” said Dr. Jitendra Oswal, deputy medical director of Bharti Vidyapeeth Hospital and College of Medicine in Pune.
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