India's second COVID-19 vaccine 'ZyCoV-D' to start human trials
New Delhi/IBNS: India's second indigenous vaccine to combat coronavirus by pharmaceutical giant Zydus Cadila received the Drug Controller General of India's (DCGI) nod to conduct the phase I/II clinical trials.
The vaccine, which has been named as ZyCoV-D, will now go for phase I/II of human trials to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of the same.
This is the second indigenous vaccine in India, which was developed at the Vaccine Technology Centre in Ahmedabad after it proved to be successful in its pre-clinical trials.
In phase I, the company will test the vaccine on selected healthy males and females (non-pregnant and non-lactating) between 18-55 years of age.
During phase II of the trial, people from either gender aged 12 or above will be selected.
Samples of around 1000 volunteers will be tested.
Earlier, Bharat Biotech's vaccine candidate COVAXIN had received the nod of the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI).
The development comes as a ray of hope for India which has worryingly recorded 9,36,181 cases of the contagion till Wednesday morning including 24,309 deaths.
India is also the third worst-hit country in the global arena after the United States and Brazil.
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