Oxford vaccine clinical trials in India to take place in 17 sites: ICMR

Indian Council of Medical Research(ICMR) said today that Oxford vaccine being manufactured by Serum Institute of India has got approval for phase 2 and 3 clinical trials.

Also Read: India records 52,050 COVID-19 cases in single day; death toll nears 40,000

ICMR director general Dr Balram Bhargava said that clinical trials would begin at seventeen sites across the country. The ICMR director informed that three Indian vaccines were in different phases of clinical testing with Bharat Biotech vaccine and DNA vaccine of Zydus Cadila having completed phase 1 trial.

Meanwhile, India's health ministry said that there were 5,86,298 active COVID-19 cases in India and over 12 lakh people have recovered. 

"50 per cent deaths due to COVID-19 have taken place among the age group of 60 years or above and 37 per cent deaths took place in the age group between 45 to 60 yrs," the ministry informed.

The ministry said that it was the first time since the first lockdown that the fatality rate was at the lowest at 2.10 per cent.

"Fatality rate has seen a progressive decline and it is continuing," the health ministry said. The ministry added that last week a few states in India were showing a rise in coronavirus cases.

Twenty-eight states and union territories have performed over 140 tests per day per million population with Goa, Delhi, Tripura and Tamil Nadu having increased their testing capacity, it said.

The health ministry informed that over 2 crore coronavirus tests have been conducted so far including more than 6.6 lakh tests in the last 24 hours.