Gorakhpur: The human clinical trial of indi jogenously developed Covaxin, a possible vaccine against coronavirus, began at a hospital, officials said on Friday.
With a record single-day surge of 57,117 infections, India’s Covid-19 tally reached 1,697,054 caseload today. The country’s death toll now stands at 36,511, as per the government data.
Gorakhpur’s Rana Hospital and Trauma Centre is among the 12 institutes that have been earmarked for the clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“The trials began under the supervision of physician Dr Ajit Pratap Singh and gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Sona Ghosh and the vaccine has been administered to 9 volunteers so far,” Chief Administrative Officer of the hospital, Venketesh Chaturvedi said.
The report stated that Gorakhpur’s Rana Hospital and Trauma Centre hospital has in the past conducted vaccine trials of typhoid and Japanese Encephalitis as well.
Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci, a top infectious disease expert in the United States, has said he was “cautiously optimistic” that a vaccine for novel Coronavirus would be a “reality” by the end of this year, or “as we go into 2021”.
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The expert panel which was looking into Serum Institute of India’s proposal to conduct the second and the third phases of the human clinical trial of the Oxford vaccine candidate has asked the country’s drug controller to allow Serum Institute of India to proceed.
AstraZeneca has reported that it has obtained ‘good data so far’ on its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, which was licensed from the University of Oxford and is currently in large-scale clinical studies.
