Bangladesh's 1st homegrown COVID-19 vaccine gets clearance for human trials

Bangladesh's first homegrown COVID-19 vaccine has obtained clearance for human trial in phase I.

The Bangavax vaccine, developed by local pharmaceutical company Globe Biotech, on Sunday received clearance from the Directorate General of Drug Administration under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare after the relevant authorities reviewed all the documents on all the previous trials.

"We've got the approval for phase I clinical trial of Bangavax," Mohammad Mohiuddin, a senior official at Globe Biotech, told reporters.

He said the trial will be conducted among 60 healthy volunteers at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University hospital in Dhaka.

In November last year, Bangavax, a single-dose COVID-19 vaccine, got ethical clearance from the Bangladesh Medical Research Council for a human trial on up to 64 healthy adult participants.

Globe Biotech applied for approval for a human trial on November 1 last year, saying its vaccine has yielded "good results" in trials on monkeys.

The vaccine can reportedly be stored at a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius for one month and of -20 degrees Celsius for up to six months.