(Image source from: india.com)

AIIMS Patna has selected 18 volunteers to conduct 3 doses of human trials of COVID-19 vaccine. The process of vaccine trial started on Monday, July 13.

Russia has recently become the first country to successfully conduct human trials of the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, India now joins the list. The clinical trial of vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 has begun on July 13.

To conduct the trials, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Patna has selected 18 volunteers for the process.

As of today, only Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila pharmaceutical companies have developed indigenous vaccine prototypes for coronavirus which were approved by Drugs Controller General of India.

About 7 firms in India are currently working on the COVID-19 vaccine and Bharat Biotech’s ‘Covaxin’ is the first vaccine to get approval from ICMR for human trials. Zydus’s ZyCov-D was next approved for the human clinical trials.

There are around 100 coronavirus vaccine prototypes that are being developed across the world and waiting for the approvals from medical authorities.

Apparently, AIIMS Patna is one of the 12 institutes selected by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for conducting COVID-19 vaccine trials in India.

Notably, several people have contact AIIMS Patna for volunteering to the human clinical trials but only 18 people of the age group 18 to 55 years were selected by the authorities.

The selected 18 volunteers would first have to go through medical check up and if the reports are fine they would undergo first dose of vaccine injection.

They would be kept under the observation by doctors for 2 to 3 hours after the first dose to see if any reaction occurs to them for the vaccine.

If everything’s fine, two other doses of injections would be given to them which would complete the whole trial process and the volunteers would be sent home.

By Gayatri Yellayi