Hyderabad: Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL), which developed India’s first potential indigenous COVID-19 vaccine, has said that the first phase of testing has begun on 375 volunteers.

The Hyderabad-based company said that human trials of Covaxin started at Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital in Bhubaneswar and 11 other hospitals in the country on July 15.

According to media reports on Saturday, these are randomised double-blind clinical trials. This means that some of the trial participants will be vaccinated and some will be given a placebo.

However, neither the volunteers nor the researchers will know who all were injected with the vaccine. They will come to know of this only after the test period is over.

During the first phase of the trial, researchers will check whether the people injected with the vaccine develop any adverse effect in their body.

Whether the vaccine works against coronavirus will not be known at this stage, which will be assessed in the second stage.

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Bharat Biotech has jointly developed the vaccine with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV).

Besides Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, the human trials of Covaxin have also started at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi, AIIMS Patna, King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Rohtak, Jeevan Rekha Hospital in Belgaum, Gillurkar Multi-speciality Hospital in Nagpur, Rana Hospital in Gorakhpur, SRM Hospital in Chennai, Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad, Prakhar Hospital in Kanpur and a hospital in Goa.

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