Gorakhpur, Kanpur hosps to conduct Covid vaccine trial

Gorakhpur/Kanpur: One private hospital in Gorakhpur and another in Kanpur are among the 12 nationwide private health facilities selected for clinical trial of the country’s first indigenous Covid-19 vaccine.
Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has developed Covaxin, indigenous Covid-19 vaccine (BBV152 Covid vaccine) in partnership with Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) and is starting its human trials.
Rana Hospital and Trauma Centre in Gorakhpur already has experience of conducting trials of vaccines for typhoid and Japanese Encephalitis.
The chief administrative officer of Rana Hospital, Venkatesh Chaturvedi said, “We were informed about our selection for clinical trial of Covid-19 vaccine in the first week of July. We are waiting for guidelines regarding the number and type of volunteers for clinical trial. However, we have started preparing some volunteers between the age of 18 and 40 years.”
“Our hospital was established in 2001 and has already completed trials of Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Typhoid vaccines. 100 volunteers were used in the trials in the month of December-January,” Chaturvedi said.
“The trial will be conducted under physician Dr Ajit Pratap Singh and gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Sona Ghosh. We arrange volunteers and rest of the work is done under the guidance of the research institute,” he added.
Prakhar Hospital in Kanpur is looking at a sample size of 50 people in the first phase and another 150 in the second phase of the human trial.
Dr J S Kushwaha, owner of Prakhar Hospital, said, “We are getting a number of calls from healthy people every day who want to volunteer for the clinical trial of Covaxin.”