Bharat Biotech's Covaxin trials on children between 2-18 years of age amounts to homicide: Plea in Delhi HC

A plea has been moved in the Delhi High Court seeking stay on phase II/III clinical trials of Covaxin - Bharat Biotech’s Covid Vaccine - on 2-18-year-olds. The application was moved in a petition filed in May for setting aside the permission granted by the country’s drug regulator - Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) - to Bharat Biotech for conducting trials of its vaccine on children. Petitioner Sanjeev Kumar has claimed in his application that while the issue was pending before the High Court with notices issued to the Centre and Bharat Biotech, the trials have already commenced from June. He has said, in his plea, that since the court did not grant a stay when it heard the matter, the government is going ahead with the trials. Mr Kumar has contended that on 15 July, the next date of hearing of the petition, the government and the company would say that the trials have commenced and hence, the plea challenging the permission granted by DCGI will become infructuous. The trial will be conducted on 525 healthy volunteers and the vaccine will be given by intramuscular route in two doses - one administered on the first day and the other 28 days later, the Health Ministry said. Covaxin, which has been indigenously developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), is being used on adults in India’s ongoing Covid vaccination drive. Mr Kumar, in his main petition, has raised an apprehension that the children who would be part of the trial could suffer adverse health or mental effects due to the testing of the vaccine on them. He has claimed that the children, who will be the test subjects, cannot be termed as volunteers as they are not capable of understanding the consequences of the trial to consent to the same. Conducting the trial on healthy children would amount to “homicide”, the petition has claimed and has sought criminal prosecution of the persons involved in such trials or those authorised to conduct the same, in the event of death or “loss of peaceful and pleasant enjoyment of life” of any of the toddlers or minors who are part of the trial.