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The Spanish Medicines Agency (AEMPS) has approved human testing of a coronavirus vaccine, Health Minister Salvador Illa announced on Friday at a press conference in Madrid, according to the MTI.
The vaccine, called Ad26.COV2.S, is being developed by Janssen Pharmaceutica, a company owned by Johnson & Johnson, for which 190 volunteers are being recruited for clinical trials in Spain. The studies will be carried out in two hospitals in Madrid and one in Santander, with healthy candidates between 18 and 55 years old and over 65 years old.
According to the head of the ministry, Spain, together with Belgium and Germany, is participating in the so-called second phase of the experiments, with a total of 550 volunteers. The first phase, which ended with promising results, was carried out in the United States and Belgium with the participation of more than a thousand subjects.
The vaccine is also expected to have a third and final phase, the success of which is expected to lead to a request for conceptualization.
The Spanish Medicines Agency is also in contact with several vaccine research companies to carry out clinical trials in Spain.
The minister stressed that Spain needs 30 million doses of the vaccine out of the 300 million for which the European Commission has signed a contract with the British-Swedish-owned pharmaceutical AstraZeneca on behalf of the 27 EU member states. Expect to receive these first doses in late December.
As in the rest of the world, several research groups are working on the development of vaccines in Spain, the most advanced stage being the experiment of the National Center for Biotechnology, where experiments with animals on the vaccine have recently been started.
According to the latest data from the Spanish Ministry of Health, in the last 24 hours more than 3,800 new coronavirus infections have been detected, of which more than a thousand have been communicated from the Community of Madrid, including the capital.
The number of confirmed infections since the beginning of the epidemic exceeds 439 thousand. As a result of the infection, 129 have died in the last week and more than 29,000 in half a year. According to reports from the provinces, 958 people were hospitalized with Covid disease in one day, while 689 were able to leave after recovery. More than 6,000 need hospital treatment for the coronavirus, which represents 6 percent of the care capacity.
Between August 18 and 24, 528,000 PCR tests were carried out in the country.
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