India COVID-19 Clinical Research Collaborative Network
To enhance the understanding of the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, India forms hospital-based clinical research, the Covid-19 Clinical Research Collaborative Network. This initiative will push research and development in the field of drug development for the pandemic and will help India-specific treatment protocols.
India’s apex biomedical research organization, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is recommended by the National Task Force on Covid-19, which is a group of technical experts reviewing key decisions regarding the viral outbreak, to coordinate this research collaborative.
A statement from the ICMR said, “Developing specific clinical management protocols and enhancing research and development for therapeutics is the goal of this network. A central database containing the clinical and laboratory parameters of hospitalized Covid-19 cases is being created for this purpose.”
A senior scientist at the ICMR said, “The data at the hospital level is primarily used in this clinical research. To get a sense of symptoms, the information by all those who are directly dealing with patient management are considered in the data.”
It is seen from the available data that around 80% of Covid-19 positive cases will develop mild symptoms, 5% critical enough needing oxygen or ventilator
support and 15% severe symptoms requiring hospitalization such as difficulty in breathing.The scientist said, “There is a lot more we need to know further though we already know a lot. The research will continue to evolve. It is an ongoing process and with every new research coming out on Covid-19, we will know new things about the virus and the disease pattern.”
He added, “While dealing with Covid-19 suspected or positive cases, it is over and above the usual testing and disease management protocol that need to be followed.”
The ICMR statement added, to the central and state health authorities in line with the existing guidelines, including local integrated disease surveillance program units on a real-time basis, the hospitals must continue to independently report the data to these bodies.
To become partners of the network, the research regulator has made public a link https://forms.gle/LHByZkR41UPHqX9FA, through which all the hospitals that are treating Covid-19 patients are being invited, and those hospitals that are willing to join the network must mandatorily enroll in the link.
Editor’s Note: India Covid19 Research Collaborative, India Covid19 Research Collaborative Network
This is a necessary and welcome development. Apart from generating India data towards probable and possible interventions, it will be necessary that Indian patients are also allowed to be in international trials ; it is desirable that Indian patients will not be required to receive drugs that are studied in distant populations . Immunology of the affected requires additional focus.