New Delhi: Bharat Biotech, the Indian firm working towards developing a COVID-19 vaccine along with ICMR, has been allowed to conduct a trial to test-administer its vaccine, through the skin.
The firm is already conducting trials for the intramuscular vaccine. Intradermal administration will require a lower dose of vaccine, which will bring down the cost of the shot. This method is used for BCG and rabies vaccines. This will be a separate trial.
The approval, as it has been reported, is subject to the company complying with two conditions—following up on participants for six months for clinical and antibody assessments, and clinical trial sites of this study should be different from the sites of the intramuscular study.
Bharat Biotech is currently conducting a phase I/II clinical trial of Covaxin on 1,125 patients at 12 hospitals across the country, including All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and Patna, King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam, Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad and PGIMS in Rohtak.
Recently, the firm has claimed that their shot will come at a price less than that of a water bottle. Speaking at a conference, Dr Krishna Ella, MD of Bharat Biotech, said, “This water bottle costs five times more than our vaccine.”
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