Oxford COVID-19 vaccine trials to continue in India: Serum Institute

After clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Oxford University and AstraZeneca have been halted after a participant had an adverse reaction in the UK-- Serum Institute of India has issued a statement to clear the air on the impending trials of the vaccine in India.

New Delhi: A day after AstraZeneca paused phase 3 clinical trial of Oxford vaccine in the UK, India's Serum Institute of India (SII) on Wednesday said that trials in the country is ongoing and has not faced any issues.

"We (SII) can't comment on reports of AstraZeneca pausing the trials in the UK, other than that they have been paused for review and shall restart soon. The Indian trials are continuing and we have faced no issues at all," SII said.

SII partnered with AstraZeneca to manufacture the COVID-19 vaccine candidate for India and low and middle-income countries.

Maharastra based renowned vaccine maker had earlier shortlisted 17 sites in India for the phase II clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine.

At least, 1,600 candidates aged between 18 to 55 years will participate in the trial.

The trial of the Oxford vaccine is put on hold in the US following suspected serious adverse reaction in a participant in the United Kingdom.

"As party of the ongoing randomised, controlled global trials of the Oxford Coronavirus vaccine, our standard review process triggered a pause to vaccination to allow the review of safety data...We are working to expedite the review of the single event to minimise any potential impact on the trial timeline. We are committed to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our trials," AstraZeneca said in a statement.

The phase 3 trial of the Oxford vaccine in the US aims to enrol about 30,000 participants at 80 sites across the country.

It is pertinent to mention here that Bill & Milinda Gates Foundation earlier said that they will provide at-risk funding of $150 million to support SII manufacturing two vaccines by the University of Oxford and Novavax.

Meanwhile, India on Wednesday recorded nearly 90,000 coronavirus cases in India in last 24 hours taking the total number of COVID cases to more than 43 lakh.

As many as 1115 deaths were also reported in the last 24 hours taking the total death to 73,890.

Meanwhile, Health Ministry statistics said that nearly 75,000 recoveries have been reported in the last 24 hours taking the total number of recoveries to 34 lakh.

India's COVID recovery rate touched 77.77 per cent. The total number of recoveries on a weekly basis has increased from 1,53,118 during the third week of July to 4,84,068 in the first week of September.

Out of the total 89,706 new cases that have been reported in the last 24 hours, Maharastra has alone contributed more than 20,000 and Andhra Pradesh has contributed more than 10,000 cases.

60 per cent of the new cases are reported from only 5 states including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

The total number of COVID cases as on Wednesday stands at 8,97,394 cases. Maharastra is leading the tally with more than 2,40,000 followed by Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh with more than 96,000 each.

In fact, these five states contribute 61 per cent of the total active cases.

India till date has conducted 5.18 crore COVID tests with 11.5 lakh conducted in the last 24 hours.