Human clinical trials for Covid-19 vaccine begin in different sites

The health ministry on Tuesday said the rate of growth in daily Covid-19 cases had declined to 3.24% in July, from over 31% in March, even as India crossed the 900,000-mark for Covid cases.

Indian Council of Medical Research Chief Balram Bhargava said human trials of vaccine had begun in different sites, and each of which will do clinical testing of vaccine on 1,000 volunteers. “Sixty per cent of vaccines supplied in the world are of Indian origin...Any vaccine produced in any part of the world will have to be scaled up by India or China...We are putting all our efforts to fast track the vaccine,” he said.

The health ministry on Tuesday said the rate of growth in daily Covid-19 cases had declined to 3.24 per cent in July, from over 31 per cent in March, even as India crossed the 900,000-mark for Covid cases. 

The country had seen more 28,000 new cases daily for the past three days. With several states and cities re-imposing lockdown due to rise in cases, the ministry said this was just an expansion of containment areas and should not be linked to lockdown or unlockdown.  

“All containment areas have to follow a strict perimeter control or the cases will rise. Whenever there is a surge in any region, then it has to follow all containment protocols,” said ministry’s officer on special duty, Rajesh Bhushan.  

Ten states account for 86 per cent of the total cases, and two of these — Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu — make up for half of total cases in the country.  “It is not like Covid is spreading in the same way and pace across the country. There are many big states such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh that are not in these top ten cases,” Bhushan said. The ministry said 22 states were conducting more than 140 tests a day per million population, which is the benchmark set by the World Health Organization (WHO) for comprehensive testing. India is conducting 201 tests a day per million, according to the ministry. 

“We have advised states to ramp up testing to meet the WHO benchmark. It will help in early detection of cases and therefore provide timely treatment,” Bhushan said.