3 volunteers to get 1st dose of Covishield during trials in Mumbai today

Mumbai, Sep 26: Three volunteers will get the first doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine candidate 'Covishield' on Saturday at Mumbai's King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital.

"Three participants were screened after obtaining their consent...they did not have comorbidities," KEM hospital's Dean said.

On Saturday, more people will be screened which will take the number of volunteers to 23, BMC stated.

BYL Nair Hospital has announced that from September 28, it will also embark on trials and administer the first doses to eligible volunteers. Currently, the process of screening suitable volunteers is underway, hospital authorities said.

Covishield has been developed and is being tested by researchers at Oxford University and is being made and manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII).

The ethics committee had on Tuesday given the hospital the green signal to start the screening of registered volunteers and so far, 13 volunteers have been screened.

"We will administer the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to the three volunteers on Saturday, following which they will have to remain in hospital for two hours, to check whether they develop complications," Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said.

Those vaccinated would be checked regularly and would be administered the second dose within 29 days.

In the meantime, 10 more volunteers would be screened on September 26 and with this, the number of volunteers would increase to 23.

"We will check how they have responded after the inoculation and test them for antibody titre. We will keep checking them over a period of time, to observe how long the antibody cover is available and how the person responds with the cover," Kakani added.

Last week, the Drugs Controller General Of India (DCGI) had given SII the nod to conduct Phases 2 and 3 of the human clinical trials of Covishield in India.