According to media reports, the Hyderabad-based vaccine manufacturer, Bharat Biotech, has been accorded permission by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) to initiate Phase I & II human clinical trials for India’s first vaccine candidate against COVID-19.
The vaccine has been named Covaxin and is an inactivated vaccine developed indigenously. It was developed after the National Institute of Virology, Pune isolated a strain of the SARS-CoV-2 and transferred it to the company. Human clinical trials are scheduled to start across India in July 2020.