Human trials for COVID vaccine begin with 1,000 volunteers: ICMR

While addressing a daily press briefing on COVID-19, the Indian Council of Medical Research on Tuesday revealed that the human trials of the two indigenous vaccines for COVID had begun and that there were approximately 1,000 human volunteers for the same.

New Delhi: Approximately 1,000 human volunteers are participating in clinical trials for each of the two indigenous Covid-19 vaccines in India, Dr. Balram Bhargava, Director General of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said while addressing a press conference on Tuesday.

Indigenously developed Bharat Biotech's COVAXIN and another candidate developed by Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila Healthcare Ltd have both received nods from Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for human clinical trials.

"Two Indian indigenous vaccine candidates have successfully completed pre-clinical trials. The results were submitted to the Drug Controller General of India, which gave approval to conduct clinical human trials," said Balram.

Affirming that India is perceived as an important vaccine supplier in the world, he said, "So, any vaccine candidate which is produced or developed in any part of the world will ultimately have to be sealed up by India or by China."

More than 150 vaccine candidates from 12 countries, including India, are in the race to counter the deadly virus that has infected over 1.2 crore people and killed more than 5.5 lakh worldwide in a little over six months.

"Russia has fast-tracked a vaccine which has been successful in its early phases. They have fast-tracked its development," said Bhargava amid reports that the Russian vaccine, deemed as the world's first Coronavirus vaccine is set to launch in mid-August.

Speaking at the press briefing, Balram also mentioned the success of China in speeding up the process of its Covid-19 vaccine programme and studies with that vaccine in the country. Apart from that, ICMR DG spoke about the speedy progress of the vaccine candidates in United States and the United Kingdom.

"The US has fast-tracked two of its vaccine candidates. The UK is also looking at how it can fast track the Oxford vaccine candidate, how it can fast track it for human use," added Balram.

On a question whether Covid-19 is airborne, Balram said, "There has been hypothesis and suggestions by several scientists that there may be some airborne transmission with microdroplets (less than 5 microns in size)...What remains important is physical distancing and use of masks."

Rajesh Bhusan, OSD in the Health Ministry who was also present said that between May 2 to May 30, the number of active Covid19 cases was more than recovered cases.

"After that, the difference between the number of active and recovered cases is rising. Today, the number of recovered cases is 1.8 times higher than the active cases. There are 571,459 recovered cases and 311,565 active cases," he said.

Referring to World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, Mishra said, "WHO says if you are testing 140 people per day, per 10 lakh, that would be indicative of comprehensive testing. There are 22 states in India who test 140 or over tests per day, per million. We advise the States and UTs to increase testing to meet WHO criteria."

The current situation is that there are 657 cases per million population in India, compared to 1638 in the test of the world. India's death rate is also lowest in the world with 17.2 per million population against world average of 73, Mishra stated.

"Despite being the second-most populous country of the world, India's growth rate has also declined from 31.28 percent in March 22 to 3.24 percent in June 22, " he added.

As many as 20 states have registered the highest recovery rate against the national average of 63 percent, he said adding that 86 percent of confirmed cases are confined to 10 states.

Two of these states namely Maharastra and Tamil Nadu have 50 percent of these cases, and eight other states including Karnataka, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Gujarat, Assam have 36 percent cases.

During the last 24 hours, India registered 28,498 COVID positive cases taking the total number of cases to 906,752. As many as 17,989 people have been cured in last 24 hours whereas 553 people have also died in the same period.