National Institute of Health (NIH) said in a statement that it has obtained "formal approval" from the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) for phase-III Clinical Trial of Recombinant Novel Coronavirus Vaccine Adenovirus Type 5 vector (Ad5-nCoV) developed by CanSinoBio and Beijing Institute of Biotechnology China (BIB).
Pakistan's drug watchdog has approved phase-III clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine developed in collaboration with a Chinese company, reports said on Tuesday.
National Institute of Health (NIH) said in a statement that it has obtained "formal approval" from the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) for phase-III Clinical Trial of Recombinant Novel Coronavirus Vaccine Adenovirus Type 5 vector (Ad5-nCoV) developed by CanSinoBio and Beijing Institute of Biotechnology China (BIB).
The NIH said this would be the first-ever phase-III clinical trial for any vaccine in Pakistan.
"It is a multi-country multi-centre clinical trial which CanSinoBio is already conducting in China, Russia, Chile, Argentina and will shortly start in Saudi Arabia. The principal investigator of the multi-centre clinical trial in Pakistan is NIH executive director Maj Gen Aamer Ikram," the NIH said.
"AJM Pharma CEO Adnan Hussain signed an agreement with the NIH last month for collaborating on the phase-III clinical trial of CanSinoBIO Ad5-nCoV in Pakistan," the statement said.
The Dawn reported that the test will be carried out by the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences, Karachi, in collaboration with a Chinese company already conducting trials in China.
As many as 200 volunteers from Karachi, representing various ethnic groups, have been registered. The trial will be completed in 56 days during which three injections of inactivated virus will be administered to the volunteers — both male and female, reports said.
Pakistan's coronavirus cases reached 289,832 on Tuesday after 617 new infections were reported in the last 24 hours. Fifteen more people died during this period, taking the number of COVID-19 deaths to 6,190 across the country, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
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