Second COVID-19 vaccine cleared for human trials as India crosses 6 lakh cases

New Delhi, July 03: After Bharat Biotech's Covaxin, another potential COVID-19 vaccine indigenously developed by Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila Healthcare Ltd has received approval from Indian regulators to begin human studies for its Covid-19 vaccine as the novel coronavirus infections continue to surge in the world's fourth worst-hit nation.

The vaccine showed a "strong immune response" in animal studies, and the antibodies produced were able to completely neutralize the wild type virus, Reuters reported quoting Zydus.

The company is expected to begin human trials this month in over 1,000 subjects in multiple sites in India. It also plans to ramp up its production capacity for the vaccine contender to serve Indian and global demand.

COVID-19: Trials of first Indian vaccine set to begin at 12 hospitals

There were no safety concerns for the vaccine candidate in repeat dose toxicology studies, Zydus said. In rabbits, up to three times the intended human dose was found to be safe, well tolerated and immunogenic.

Similar efforts are underway in different countries. Precisely, there are nearly 150 vaccine candidates under development currently, of which 17 are undergoing human trials.

University of Oxford's vaccine is the furthest in the trial, currently in the third phase, while there are various candidates in the second phase. Moderna Inc, Chinese Sinovac Biotech and Oxford-AstraZeneca experimental vaccines are all expected to go into late-stage trials in the coming month.

With over 20,000 COVID-19 cases, India on Friday recorded the highest one-day spike this month.

Coronavirus cases have gone up to 6,25,544 with 20,903 new cases being reported in the past 24 hours. 379 deaths have been reported in a single day taking the death toll to 18,213 in India.