Serum Institute to begin trials for third phase of Oxford Covid-19 vaccine in India

New Delhi : Union Health Ministry on Tuesday briefed about the development of three coronavirus vaccines, which are under different phases of clinical trials in India. The officials notified that the Serum Institute will restart the third phase of human trials of Oxford's coronavirus vaccine after getting all necessary permissions.

The trial was suspended recently after one of the volunteers had developed an unexplainable allergy during the tests. 

"Cadila and Bharat Biotech have completed phase-I trials. Serum Institute has completed phase II-B3 trials, and will start phase-III trial (with 1,500 patients at 14 locations) after clearances," said Balram Bhargava, DG, ICMR.

Phase-I clinical trials have revealed "excellent safety" of the two candidate vaccines indigenously developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR and Cadila Healthcare Ltd and their immunogenicity testing is now in progress, Minister of State for Health Ashwini Choubey informed the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

Serum Institute of India (SII) and ICMR have partnered for clinical development of two global vaccine candidates.

The first is ChAdOx1-S, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine developed by University of Oxford/AstraZeneca. This vaccine is undergoing phase III clinical trials in Brazil.