hyderabad the us food and drug administration usfda has lifted the clinical hold on the phase 2 and 3 immunobridging clinical trials of bharat biotechs covid19 vaccine covaxin in the usthis was announced by ocugen the hyderabadbased vaccine makers partner for us on mondayocugen will now work with study sites to fully resume this clinical development programme immediately dr shankar musunuri chairman ceo and cofounder ocugen inc said in a regulatory filing with the us bourseswere pleased that we can proceed with our clinical trials for covaxin our whole virus inactivated covid19 vaccine candidate the need for delivering an additional differentiated vaccine option we believe remains a priority he said the us drug regulator had put a clinical hold on covaxins us trials in the second week of april this year after the world health organisation who suspended covaxin supply for exports on grounds of good manufacturing deficienciesocugen had then stated that the usfda hold was a result of its decision to voluntarily pause dosing in participants while it was evaluating the statements made by who after their inspection and that it would work with usfda to address any questionswhile over 350 million doses of covaxin have been administered to adults outside the us the inactivated whole virus vaccine is still an investigational vaccine candidate in the us marketcovaxin has received full approval for use in adults in india and an eua nod for use in children in the 612 years and 1517 years age bracket it has also received emergency use authorisation in 25 countries bharat biotech received emergency use listing eul from who for covaxin in early november last year