DELHI AIIMS TO START COVAXIN TRIAL THIS WEEK

NEW DELHI: Five healthy volunteers are likely to receive the first shot of Bharat Biotech’s anti-coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine candidate, Covaxin, by this weekend at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.

AIIMS, one of the 12 approved sites in the country for conducting early human clinical trials on vaccine candidates, on Saturday received approval of the institute ethics committee to begin the trial.“the ethics committee has granted its approval for the trial. Recruitment of healthy volunteers will begin from Monday,” confirmed Dr Randeep Guleria, director, AIIMS.

In just 24 hours after having sought applications from people willing to be volunteers for the trial, the hospital received 1,000 applications against its requirement of 100 volunteers.

Covaxin has been jointly developed by the ICMR and Bharat Biotech International Limited. The virus strain for Covaxin was isolated at Icmr-national Institute of Virology in Pune, and transferred to the company on May 9.