NEW DELHI: All India Institute of Medical Sciences (
AIIMS) is unable to find the required number of volunteers for the phase-3 trial of Bharat Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine, with officials saying people are unwilling to participate in the exercise thinking why take part in a trial when a vaccine would be available soon.
AIIMS is one of the institutes conducting the final phase of the trial of Covaxin and it needs around 1,500 volunteers for the purpose. Covaxin has been indigenously developed by Bharat Biotech, in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research.
“We wanted 1,500-2,000 participants but so far, we have been able to recruit only around 200 participants,” Dr Sanjay Rai, professor in the department of community medicine at AIIMS and also the principal investigator of the study, said.