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Recent pauses in clinical trials examining a possible coronavirus vaccine and therapeutics due to safety concerns should not concern the American public, Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNBC on Tuesday. Disease Prevention.
Rather, Frieden said, it is evidence that drug manufacturers and regulators maintain a commitment to rigorous scientific principles governing trials, even as they seek to accelerate development timelines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It’s a bit of a paradox, but it’s actually reassuring, because we expect to see signs that may not indicate a problem and we hope that companies will pause so we can look carefully,” said Frieden, who led the CDC from 2009 to 2017 under the Administration. of Obama. “It gives peace of mind that we are not taking shortcuts on security.”
Frieden’s comments Tuesday about “Closing Bell” followed news that US regulators were pausing a late-stage trial of Eli Lilly’s antibody treatment for Covid-19 in order to assess a potential safety issue.
Just a day earlier, Johnson & Johnson confirmed that its large-scale coronavirus vaccine trial was being paused when the safety monitoring board examined an “adverse event” in a participant. It is not yet known whether the person received the vaccine or a placebo.
The British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial remains on hold in the US after an unexplained illness was reported in a participant in the UK. However, regulators in the UK and other countries have allowed the trials to resume.
Medical experts say that trial pauses are not uncommon in vaccine and drug development, which typically take years to complete. But the recent security strikes have received increased attention with the world amid a pandemic that has killed more than 1 million people and devastated economies.
In the United States, in particular, there has also been growing concern that the Trump administration is rushing approval of a coronavirus vaccine for political reasons. The head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Stephen Hahn, has tried to alleviate those concerns, saying he “has no intention” to invalidate career scientists at the agency.
Frieden acknowledged the confidence concerns about the vaccine, but the former New York City health commissioner emphasized the need for the public to wait for more information before reaching conclusions. “People say, ‘Would you get a vaccine?’ If you ask me, I would say, ‘Well, it depends on what the data shows,’ he said. “As time goes on, we’ll learn more.”
