NEW DELHI: The Centre on Tuesday cautioned against pinning too much hope on the Covid-19 vaccines, saying everyone wants them to succeed but there is no guarantee, they will. At a press briefing on the outbreak management, Dr V K Paul, member (health), Niti Aayog, who also heads the National Expert Group on Covid- 19 Vaccine Administration, said “it won’t be appropriate to assume any vaccine under trial will emerge as successful”.
This cautionary message comes a day before a vaccine candidate developed by UK’s Oxford University enters phase 2 and 3 trial in India while two other homegrown experimental vaccines are already in early stage human trials.
The trial for the vaccine candidate by Oxford University, for which the Serum Institute of India is a manufacturing partner, is set to begin on Wednesday across 17 centres, including AIIMS, Delhi on a total of 1600 volunteers.
The results on the efficacy of the experimental vaccines, which is also being tried in several other studies, will take about 7 months to come, according to the trial details listed on the Clinical Trial Registry of India. Dr Paul said while results from the early stage trials of two vaccine candidates — one each by Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila — can be expected sooner, the indications from this one in an advanced stage could take much longer.
Trial from today
The trial for the vaccine candidate by Oxford University is set to begin on Wednesday across 17 centres, including AIIMS, Delhi.