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

NEWDELHI: 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 Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) constituted the country’s first National Task Force on Covid- 1 9 , which includes a group of technical experts to help initiate research studies and identify research priorities for clinical research; diagnostics and bio-markers; epidemiology and surveillance; vaccines and drug development. The group is headed by AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria and its research priority is establishing a clinical research collaborative.

“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) for registration. “This i s 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. What is working in terms of treatment and what is not, among other things,” said a senior scientist at the ICMR.