Health dept to conduct clinical trials of BCG in collaboration with ICMR

Kolkata: The state Health department in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is set to conduct the clinical trial of BCG vaccine against Covid in December.

This is for the first time when a state government department is tieing up with a Centre owned organisation to carry out a trial in the city to check the efficacy of BCG vaccine against Covid. Earlier, the ICMR had carried out a similar trial with the NICED in Kolkata.

According to the sources in the state health department, School of Tropical Medicine has been selected as the venue to conduct the joint trails. The ICMR has already started the trial run of this vaccine in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and many other states.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi and Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute in Lucknow have also collaborated with the ICMR.

The Health department has already formed a special team comprising of five experts who will play a key role during the clinical trial in the city. A list has been prepared featuring the names of the persons on whom the vaccine would be applied. Some patients have been selected for human trials who have been suffering from serious ailments like diabetes, COPD along with Covid. Elderly people have been excluded from the list. Everything has been done as per the standard norms.

It was learnt that the efficacy of the BCG vaccine against Covid would be tested during the clinical trial. Senior officials from the ICMR will also supervise the clinical trails. The clinical trails of BCG vaccine may also be conducted in other medical college and hospitals in the future after seeing the success rate at the School of Tropical Medicine.

A senior official of the health department said that various steps have been taken for carrying out the BCG clinical trials successfully. This is for the first time the health department is conducting a joint clinical trails.