Pune Hospital to begin Phase III of human trial of COVID vaccine

Sassoon General Hospital in Pune, Maharashtra is all set to begin the phase III clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Oxford University, and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII), a senior official said.

Under phase-II, trials had been conducted at the Bharti Vidyapeeth Medical College and also KEM Hospital in the city.

"We have started the phase-III trials of the vaccine (candidate Covishield). We will administer dose to 150 to 200 volunteers," said Dr Muralidhar Tambe, Dean, Sassoon General Hospital.

The SII has partnered with British-Swedish pharma company AstraZeneca for manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccine candidate, being developed by the University of Oxford.

Earlier this month, the SII had paused the clinical trials of the vaccine candidate in the country.

The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had on September 11 directed the SII to suspend any new recruitment in the phase-II and III clinical trial of the vaccine till further orders after AstraZeneca paused the trials in other countries because of "an unexplained illness" in a participant in the study.

However, on September 15, the DCGI gave green signal to the SII to resume clinical trial of the vaccine.