AIIMS Delhi To Start Booster Dose Trial Of Intranasal Covid Vaccine From March 11

The AIIMS will start the booster dose trial of Bharat Biotech's intranasal COVID-19 vaccine from Friday. The booster dose will be given to those who have received both the doses of either Covaxin or Covishield at least five months ago but not more than seven months back, Dr Sanjay Rai, Professor at the Centre for Community Medicine at AIIMS, New Delhi told PTI.

India is yet to approve the use of intranasal vaccine against COVID-19, BBV154 developed by the Hyderabad based company.

The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) in January had given permission to Bharat Biotech to conduct a phase-3 randomized, multi-centric study to evaluate the immunogenicity and safety of the booster dose in participants previously vaccinated with Covishield or Covaxin.

"We got the ethical approval for initiating the booster dose trial on Wednesday. Registration for the participants will start from March 10 via email --HYPERLINK "mailto:ctaiims.covid19@gmail.com"ctaiims.covid19@gmail.com --- and WhatsApp (7428847499) for those who received both the doses of either Covaxin or Covishield more than 5 months but less than 7 months ago," Dr Rai said.

AIIMS, New Delhi is one of the five sites where the booster trial for the nasal vaccine will be conducted.

BBV154 is an intranasal replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus SARS-CoV-2 vectored vaccine.