NIMS Hyderabad Administers First Dose Of COVAXIN Vaccine

HYDERABAD: The Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) first step towards clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccine was successful. As part of India's first Coronavirus vaccine COVAXIN clinical trials, NIMS in Hyderabad has administered the first dose of vaccine to two volunteers on Monday, July 20.

NIMS doctors will administer COVAXIN vaccine to two more volunteers on Wednesday, July 22.

NIMS doctors said the condition of two volunteers were stable and they were discharged on Tuesday. The health condition of the two volunteers will be monitored for 14 days, said COVAXIN clinical trials principal investigator, assistant professor Dr C Prabhakar Reddy.

Volunteers will be monitored daily by phone and video calls, after 14 days they will be brought back to the hospital to collect their blood samples and get them tested, said Prabhakar.

Doctors said that they will monitor the extent to which antibodies have been developed in the volunteer's body due to the inactivated virus and if there are any problems. Doctors further added that they would give the volunteers a second dose of vaccine if everything went well.

Allergies and other health problems have not been reported among the two volunteers who were currently vaccinated, doctors said.

Doctors at the NIMS clinical and pharmacology department are delighted that the first attempt of the human clinical trial of the COVAXIN vaccine has been successful.

As part of the clinical trials, NIMS doctors sent blood samples from 13 volunteers to an ICMR approved lab in Delhi. It is learned that eight of them have been issued fitness certificates.

NIMS doctors will administer COVAXIN vaccine to two more volunteers on Wednesday, based on these certificates. With this, the number of volunteers who were injected with the vaccine will reach four.

The clinical trials were held on Tuesday as well, but as none of the volunteers had come to get vaccinated, doctors were unable to administer the dose of COVAXIN, said NIMS clinical trials coordinator Dr Lakshmi Bhaskar.

As part of these trials, the first and second phase trials will be conducted on 60 healthy people and the third stage involves experimenting on a hundred people.

The vaccine is given in five doses in total and the vaccine is expected to be completed in 2 - 3 months.

NIMS doctors said that the vaccine would be available by the end of this year or at the starting of the new year if the tests are successful.