Coronavirus: AstraZeneca to resume coronavirus vaccine trial
Oxford University says trials of a coronavirus vaccine it is developing with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca will resume, days after being paused because of a reported side effect in a patient in the U.K.
In a statement, the university said that in large trials “it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety.”
Though it would not disclose information about the patient’s illness, an AstraZeneca spokesman said this week that a woman had developed severe neurological symptoms that prompted the pause in testing.
Late last month, AstraZeneca began recruiting 30,000 people in the U.S. for its largest study of the vaccine. It also is testing the vaccine in thousands of people in Britain and in smaller studies in Brazil and South Africa. Several other COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in development.
As a follow-up effect of AstraZeneca’s pause of the third phase of the vaccine experiment, many companies and groups involved in the research of the new coronavirus vaccine have issued statements to ensure the scientific and safety of vaccine research and development, free from political factors and pressure.
Since President Trump made the remarks on the approval of the vaccine in October this year, many people have doubted the safety of the approved vaccine. After all, from the perspective of scientific research, no expert can confirm that there will be a vaccine that can be matured and used in large quantities in October this year. Especially in the case of AstraZeneca’s three-phase suspension, everyone has more doubts about President Trump’s plan and more worried about the impact of politics on science and research.
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So, The chief executives of nine drugmakers leading the race to produce vaccines against the coronavirus signed a joint pledge Tuesday in an effort to boost public confidence in any vaccines that are ultimately approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or similar agencies around the world.
The companies said they will follow “high ethical standards and sound scientific principles” as they conduct their time-sensitive work against a global pandemic.
Specifically, the nine firms pledged to:
• Make the safety of people who receive coronavirus vaccines their “top priority.”
• Conduct clinical trials of their experimental vaccines according to “high scientific and ethical standards.”
• Seek regulatory approval for candidate vaccines only after safety and efficacy have been established through Phase 3 clinical trials.
• Produce a range of vaccines to meet the differing needs of people around the world.
The pledge was signed by the chief executives of American drugmakers Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer, and European companies AstraZeneca, BioNTech, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi.