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A man died in a corona vaccine study conducted by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. The 28-year-old apparently did not receive the vaccine, but a placebo.
A test person died during the study of a corona vaccine by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in Brazil. This was confirmed by the Brazilian health authority Anvisa on Wednesday. The cause of death was not clear at first.
The British-Swedish group developed the vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford. According to its own information, Anvisa had already been informed of this on Monday. The recommendation is to continue testing. The case is currently under review and data on the volunteers must be kept confidential.
Anvisa has allowed nearly half a dozen such tests, and thousands of volunteers in Brazil have received a vaccine in recent weeks. The virus is still spreading in the most populous country in Latin America with around 210 million inhabitants, and Brazil also has excellent research facilities.
According to the television station “CNN Brasil”, the deceased is a 28-year-old man from Rio de Janeiro who died of complications related to Covid-19. The Brazilian newspaper “O Globo” reported, instead, citing sources who did not want to be identified for legal reasons that the volunteer in question had not received the vaccine but a placebo. Initially, neither the laboratory nor the test centers nor Anvisa officially commented on this issue.
The study was stopped several times before
AstraZeneca temporarily halted the clinical trial of its promising corona vaccine in September, apparently not for the first time. Until then, the AZD1222 vaccine was one of the promising candidates among potential corona vaccines. If the death of the volunteer were related to the vaccine, it would be a severe blow to the project.
The vaccine is currently under review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in a so-called continuous review process. In this process, clinical trial data is continuously submitted and evaluated. The EU has already signed a framework agreement with AstraZeneca for the delivery of vaccination doses.