AIIMS-Delhi is among the 12 sites selected by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) for conducting phase I and II human trials of Covaxin.

In phase I, the vaccine would be tested on 375 volunteers and the maximum of 100 of them would be from AIIMS.

COVID-19 vaccine candidate Covaxin, developed by the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the ICMR and the National Institute of Virology (NIV), had recently got the nod for human clinical trials from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI).

How to participate in human trials of COVAXIN-

Anybody willing to participate in the trial can send an email to Ctaiims.covid19@gmail.com or an SMS to or call on 7428847499, he said. The institute may also put up these contact details on its website.

Since India is one of the largest vaccine producers in the world, it is the country’s “moral responsibility” to fast-track vaccine development process to break the chain of coronavirus transmission, he had said.

Dr Sanjay Rai, Professor at the Centre for Community Medicine at AIIMS told ANI that the hospital will start enrolling healthy individuals from Monday onwards.

“Today, we got approval from AIIMS Ethics Committee for starting the human clinical trial of the indigenously developed Covaxin. We are launching the enrollment process from Monday. We are going to select healthy participants with no comorbidities and without a history of Covid-19. The age group of the study population is 18 to 55 years. This would be a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial,” Dr Rai told ANI.