COVAXIN: AIIMS to start human trials of India's first COVID-19 vaccine today

New Delhi, July 20: Human trials for India's first coronavirus vaccine COVAXIN are to begin on Monday at the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), Delhi after its Ethics Committee on Saturday gave its approval.

"Few volunteers have already registered for the trial. We would start the screening of the individuals and evaluate their health condition from Monday onwards before vaccinating them," Dr Sanjay Rai, Professor at the Centre for Community Medicine at AIIMS said.

Dr Rai, who is also the Principal Investigator for conducting these trials at AIIMS-Delhi, said, the first dose of vaccine likely to be administered to volunteers on this Thursday.

Volunteers-criteria for clinical trial of Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin in AIIMS Delhi

• Healthy volunteers with no history of COVID-19 and having no comorbidities,
• Should be aged more than 18 years and less than 55 years,

would be eligible to participate in the randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial.

Whoever willing to participate in the trial can send an email to [email protected] or an SMS to or call on 7428847499.

Dr Balram Bhargava, Director-General of Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) in a letter to principal investigators of the 12 sites had asked them to fast-track the human clinical trial approvals.

The letter states, "it is one of the top priority projects which is being monitored at the top-most level of the government".

AIIMS-Delhi is among the 12 sites selected by the ICMR for conducting phase I and II human trials of Covaxin.

In phase I, the vaccine would be tested on 375 volunteers and 100 of them would be from AIIMS.

Hyderabad-based pharma Bharat Biotech had recently got the nod for human clinical trials from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), in collaboration with the ICMR and the National Institute of Virology (NIV).

DCGI has also given its permission to ICMR to conduct phase I/II clinical trials on humans for Covid-19 vaccine to pharma giant Zydus Cadila.