THE CURIOUS CASE OF PHASE-3 DATA
Vaccine clinical development is a 3-phase process. Small groups of people receive vaccines during phase-1. In Phase II, the clinical study is expanded and vaccines are given to more people than the phase-1who similar to those age groups for whom the new vaccine is required. In Phase III, the vaccine is given to thousands of people and tested for efficacy, immunogenicity and safety. Many vaccines even undergo Phase IV for their own R &D.
It is a practice and to keep up the transparency the data of each trial phase results are put in open for the scientific community and others to understand the study.
In India, we have Covishield, Sputnik, Zydus, Biological-E have done their human trials among a sizeable Indians, we are yet to see the data out till date, it will be good to put out those details before administering these vaccines to public at large, we can argue these are tried and tested elsewhere, but in a democratic country it is good to know what we are going to be administered with, can we get those before shouting to get the phase3 of covaxin, which is according to a government official will be out by 20th June
The active number of cases in India has gone down to a 74-day low to just a little over 7.6 lakh, a stark decline from about a month ago, when the country had been reporting over 37 lakh active cases. India also recorded a decline in daily cases, going down to 60,753 as on Saturday morning, from over 62,000 as on Friday morning, according to the data released by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
With this, the total number of coronavirus cases reported in the country has reached 2,98,23,546. India also reported 1,647 deaths, taking the death toll to over 3.85 lakh. With the active cases being 2.55% of the total caseload of the country, and the recovery rate improving to 96.16%, India seems to be heading towards the end of the second wave for now.
Meanwhile, India has so far administered nearly 27.24 crore doses of vaccine in 155 days of the vaccination drive, of which, over 33 lakh were administered on Friday itself, the ministry said. Among the doses administered, about 22 crore are first doses, while over 5 crore are second doses.
