Odisha: SUM Hospital chosen for country’s first Covid-19 vaccine trial

BHUBANESWAR: The Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, part of SOA Deemed to be University here, has been chosen by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) to undertake human clinical trials of India’s first Covid-19 vaccine, the hospital said.

IMS and SUM Hospital is among 13 medical institutes in the country, and the only in Odisha, identified by ICMR to take up clinical trials. The ICMR has advised it to fast track all approvals related to the initiation of the clinical trial in view of the public health emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. E Venkat Rao, professor of community medicine in the hospital, will be the principal investigator. This is the first indigenous vaccine being developed by India and is derived from a strain of SARS-CoV-2 isolated by ICMR-National Institute of Virology, Pune. ICMR and Bharat Biotech are jointly working on the pre-clinical as well as clinical development of this vaccine. It has already received approval for phase-I and phase-II human trials by the Drug Controller General of India.