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Reuters
The resumption of trials of a possible coronavirus vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford in Great Britain in cooperation with AstraZeneca, was announced after a temporary halt due to the illness of a volunteer.
On Tuesday, AstraZeneca said the trials were temporarily stopped to investigate whether the reported side effect was related to the vaccine.
But the University of Oxford announced Saturday that it considered the situation safe to continue with the experiments.
The vaccine is considered a strong competitor among the dozens of vaccines in development.
Oxford University said in a statement that “some of the participants are expected” to become ill “in large experiments like these.
The British government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, agrees. He told a news conference in Downing Street last Wednesday that what happened in the Oxford experiment was not unusual.
The university added that studies could now resume, following the recommendations of the Independent Safety Review Committee and Britain’s regulatory body.
Oxford University said it would not release information about the patient’s morbidity for confidentiality reasons, but the New York Times reported that one volunteer, in the British experiment, had been diagnosed with transverse myelitis, which could be due to a viral infection.
Hopes were high that the vaccine would be the first vaccine to hit the market, after the success of the first and second phase trials.
About 30,000 participants from the United States, Great Britain, Brazil and South Africa participated in the move to the third phase in recent weeks.
Phase III vaccine trials often involve thousands of participants and can last several years.
The World Health Organization says nearly 180 potential vaccines are being tested, but none have completed clinical trials.
US President Donald Trump hoped that a vaccine would be available in the United States before the November 3 elections, but his remarks raised concerns that politics will be prioritized over safety.
But the chief scientist at the World Health Organization said countries should not start “cutting back” in the race to develop a vaccine.
“Just because we are talking about speed and size does not mean that we are starting to negotiate or shorten procedures on what can normally be assessed,” Dr. Sumiya Swaminathan said Wednesday.
“The rules of the game have yet to be followed. When it comes to drugs and vaccines given to people, we have to prove their safety first and foremost,” he added.
The risk of “losing control”
Meanwhile, official figures indicated an increase in the rate of Coronavirus infection in Britain.
Professor Sir Mark Walport, a member of the government’s Emergency Scientific Advisory Panel, warned that Britain was “on the brink of losing control of the virus.”
“You just have to look to see what is happening in France and what is happening in Spain,” he told the BBC.
And official figures, released on Saturday, showed another 3,497 people tested positive for the virus in Britain.
