New Delhi: After India’s first vaccine for coronavirus Covaxin Human clinical trials approval, Zydus came up with ‘ZyCov-D’ second vaccine for COVID-19 gets approval from the Drugs Controller General of India(DCGI) to conduct the Phase 1 and Phase 2 Human clinical trials.
This is the second vaccine of India to get approval for Human clinical trials.
The DCGI approved the vaccine candidate for human trials after Zydus Cadila’s candidate was found to be safe. “The phase I and II trials will take around three months to be completed,” the source said.
Zydus said the potential vaccine showed a “strong immune response” in animal studies.
Meanwhile, COVAXIN, India’s indigenous vaccine candidate for the coronavirus, is slated to be launched on August 15, according to the ICMR. Human clinical trials for the vaccine—which is being jointly developed by Bharat Biotech and ICMR-NIV—are set to begin this month, after the drug regulator gave approval for phase one and two human trials.
In May, the government said there are 30 groups in India working to find a COVID vaccine. India is working to find a coronavirus vaccine in three ways – fully indigenous, collaboration with foreign players where India is leading, and collaborations where others are leading the development.
Vaccines normally take 10-15 years to develop and cost $200-300 million but global efforts are on to achieve this in one year.
According to the World Health Organization’s latest data as of June 29, there are 17 vaccines trials in different stages of clinical evaluation and another 132 in pre-clinical stages. Eight of the 17 are being tested in China. There are over 10.8 million cases of COVID-19 across the world currently.