Govt forms clinical research team for better insight into Covid-19 pandemic

NEW DELHI: India is putting in place a hospital-based clinical research collaborative, the ‘India Covid-19 Clinical Research Collaborative Network’, to enhance the clinical understanding of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in the country to develop India specific treatment protocols, and push research and development in the field of drug development for the viral infection.

The country’s National Task Force on Covid-19, a group of technical experts reviewing important decisions regarding the disease, has recommended the establishment of the collaborative that would need to be coordinated by the country’s apex biomedical research organisation, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

“The goal is to develop specific clinical management protocols and further research and development for therapeutics. For this purpose, a central database of clinical and laboratory parameters of hospitalized Covid-19 cases is being created,” read a statement from the ICMR.

All hospitals with isolation wards and treating Covid-19 patients are being invited to become partners in the network.

The regulator has made public a link (https://forms.gle/LHByZkR41UPHqX9FA) taking them to a registration forms that must be filled by hospitals interested in becoming a part of the research network.

“This is clinical research mostly using data at the hospital level, involving those who are directly dealing with patients to know what kind of cases are coming to hospitals, with what symptoms. What is working in terms of treatment and what is not, among other things,” said a senior scientist at the ICMR.