‘Covaxin’ the Covid-19 vaccine being prepared by Hyderabad based Bharat Biotech International Limited, will soon enter the Phase-3 of clinical trials. Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij has volunteered to get vaccinated as the first volunteer. Sharing the information on Twitter, Vij said that the third phase trials for the vaccine will begin in Haryana on November 20.
Trial for third phase of Covaxin a coronavirus vaccine product of Bhart Biotech to start in Haryana on 20th November. I have offered myself as first volunteer to get vaccinated .
— ANIL VIJ MINISTER HARYANA (@anilvijminister) November 18, 2020
Bharat Biotech is developing Covaxin in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune. The phase 3 trial of Covaxin that will be conducted on 26,000 volunteers will be the largest clinical trial for a Covid-19 vaccine candidate in India.
Several countries including the USA, the UK, Russia and China are running trials to roll-out a vaccine for the deadly Wuhan virus that has claimed millions of lives world over and still continues to do so. Vaccines usually take years to be prepared but in view of the havoc caused by Covid-19 pharmaceutical companies are hurrying the process as much as possible.
Russia and China claimed to have prepared vaccines
So far Russia and China are the only countries who have rolled-out vaccines for the virus. Russia was the first to announce a vaccine for the coronavirus. The vaccine called Sputnik-V was first administered to the daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sputnik-V was made available for public while its later stage trials continued. The vaccine is undergoing phase 3 trials in several countries including Belarus, UAE and Venezuela. India’s pharma major Dr. Reddy’s Labs has collaborated with Russia’s Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) to distribute and conduct clinical trials of the vaccine in India.
China has also claimed to have prepared a vaccine for Covid-1. Three vaccines are undergoing phase three trials in China. In the month of September, state-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm had claimed to have vaccinated more than hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens against coronavirus, even though the crucial phase 3 clinical trial were yet to be concluded.
Recently, Pfizer and Moderna have claimed that their vaccine candidates have shown promising results too.
