The announcement of ICMR that PM Modi would release ‘Covaccine’, dubbed as India’s vaccine for Corona, has ended up creating quite a lot of controversies. Opposition parties as well as experts have questioned the possibility of rolling out a vaccine in such a short time span. Now, latest evidences suggest that ICMR’s claim might remain distant dream, if not an impossible one.
Information provided by the Clinical Trial Registry of India (CTRI) suggest that Bharat Biotech has asked for a period of one and half years for the conductance of clinical trial of ‘Covaccines’ in humans. It must be added that even the follow-up procedure according to the protocol of the experiment, would require 6 months. Bharat Biotech is engaged in a rigorous process of developing a vaccine. The experiment is carried out as a joint venture between the Bharat Biotech and the National Virology Institute.
Historical evidences also suggest that the record time span, within which a vaccine has been developed till date, is 4 years. It is the effort to develop vaccine for Mumps that has achieved the feat for the fastest vaccine trials in the history. However, the fastest vaccine trial that has produced a result in the recent time was for Ebola – 5 years.
