India's first COVID-19 vaccine 'COVAXIN'

Covaxin — India’s first Covid-19 vaccine by Bharat Biotech gets DCGI nod for human trials

The permission for human clinical trials was granted by DCGI after the company submitted results generated from preclinical studies, demonstrating safety and immune response.

The vaccine is being developed  and manufactured in collaboration with ICMR & NIV. It was developed  at the company's Bio-safety Level-III high containment facility at Genome Valley in the city.  

The human clinical trials are scheduled to start across India in July, 2020. Results are expected to be out by October 2020, following which larger clinical trials will be conducted.

The indigenously developed vaccine has been named as Covaxin and is an inactivated vaccine. It has been developed after National Institute of Virology, Pune isolated a strain of the novel Coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 and transferred it to the company.

What is an inactivated vaccine?

The process involves growing the virus on a large scale and killing/inactivating the virus with a chemical. Once the vaccine is injected into a human, it has no potential to infect or replicate, since it is a killed virus. It helps the immune system mount an antibody response towards virus.

Besides Bharat Biotech, at least five other Indian companies are working on a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus while similar efforts are underway in different countries.