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The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca will resume clinical trials in the UK for the experimental COVID vaccine, after they were stopped a few days ago due to a participant’s illness.
Oxford announced in a statement Saturday that UK health regulator MHRA had recommended resuming human testing, the BBC reports.
An independent committee concluded its investigation into the incident with the ill participant and recommended to this authority that clinical trials in humans can safely continue, AstraZeneca said.
Approximately 18,000 people have so far participated in the vaccine study developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca. In this testing phase, the third phase, which is also the last before a vaccine is commercialized, should involve about 30,000 subjects. In addition to the UK, clinical trials are conducted in other countries, especially in Brazil.
There were high hopes that the AstraZeneca vaccine could be one of the first to hit the market after successfully passing phases 1 and 2.
Right New York Times, a British volunteer who received the vaccine became ill and was diagnosed with ‘transverse myelitis’, an inflammation of the bone marrow spine. However, it is unknown if his illness was caused by the vaccine or if it was an earlier date.
These interruptions in the third phase of the trial, when a volunteer falls ill, are common and doctors must determine if it is a side effect of the vaccine or if the illness has other causes.
The management of the pharmaceutical AstraZeneca estimates that the serum could be available later this year or early 2021 at the latest.
35 variants of the COVID vaccine are being tested in humans around the world.
Editor: Luana Păvălucă
