Serum Institute resumes Vaccine Trials Again! India to get its Vaccine soon? Details

The Serum Institute of India (SII) announced it will be resuming vaccine trails in India once it gets approval from Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI). The announcement came hours after clinical trials for AstraZeneca and Oxford University's coronavirus vaccine candidate, commenced on Saturday at UK. 

AstraZeneca had paused vaccine trials after one of the volunteers developed an unexplained illness. Countries such as USA, UK, Brazil and South Africa suspended trials temporarily following the incident. 

Subsequently, DCGI instructed SII to suspend phase two and three trials of the vaccine till further orders are issued. SII was asked to improve safety monitoring of the subjects who were vaccinated as a part of the trial and submit its plan and reports to DCGI. 

"Once DCGI will give us the permission to restart the trials in India, we will resume the trials," Serum Institute of India said in its statement.

Adar Poonawalla the CEO and Owner, Serum Institute of India, stated that no conclusions are to be drawn till the trials are completed.

"As I'd mentioned earlier, we should not jump to conclusions until the trials are fully concluded. The recent chains of events are a clear example why we should not bias the process and should respect the process till the end. Good news, UniofOxford," he said in a tweet.

“India's top drugs regulator granted permission to SII on August 2 to conduct phase II/III clinical trial of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 coronavirus vaccine (recombinant) at various clinical trial sites in the country to determine its safety and immunogenicity,” Times Now reported.