AIIMS allows human trials of India's first coronavirus vaccine

New Delhi : The AIIMS Ethics Committee on Saturday gave a green signal to the human clinical trials of the India's coronavirus vaccine candidate Covaxin. 

AIIMS-Delhi is among the 12 sites selected by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) where Phase I and Phase II human trials of the vaccine will be conducted. In phase I, the vaccine would be tested on 375 volunteers and a maximum of 100 of them would be from AIIMS.

"The AIIMS Ethics Committee gave its approval for starting the human clinical trial of the indigenously developed Covaxin today. Healthy volunteers having no comorbid conditions and without a history of COVID-19, aged more than 18 years and less than 55 years, would be eligible to participate in the randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial," Dr Sanjay Rai, Professor at the Centre for Community Medicine at AIIMS said.

"Few volunteers have already registered for the trial. We would start the screening of the individuals and evaluate their health condition from Monday onwards before vaccinating them," Rai, who is also the principal investigator of the study, said.

Anybody willing to participate in the trial can send an email to Ctaiims.covid19@gmail.com or an SMS to or call on 7428847499, he said.

Covaxin has been developed by the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the ICMR and the National Institute of Virology (NIV).