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SYDNEY: Australia is not concerned by AstraZeneca’s decision to suspend its COVID-19 vaccine trial, its deputy chief medical officer said on Wednesday (9 September), as daily cases spiked in the country’s coronavirus hot spot.
AstraZeneca said Tuesday that it has halted a late-stage trial of one of the main candidates for the COVID-19 vaccine after an unexplained illness in a study participant.
The nature of the case and when it happened were not detailed, although the participant is expected to recover, according to Stat News, which first reported the news.
“With the information I have at the moment, I am not concerned,” Australia’s Deputy Medical Director Nick Coatsworth told Sky News, adding that suspending trials does not mean that the vaccine “is out of the question.”
READ: Australia’s COVID-19 Hotspot Status to Deepen Contact Tracing
“In some respects, this is a very positive thing because it shows that despite the accelerated development of the vaccine, safety is the priority of researchers and clinical trials.”
Coatsworth said Australia, like many other governments, has invested in several coronavirus vaccine candidates, “knowing that not all will pass.”
AstraZeneca’s decision to suspend the trial comes after nine of the top vaccine developers in the US and Europe pledged Tuesday to uphold scientific standards for safety and efficacy of their vaccines despite the urgency to contain the pandemic.
Australia said on Monday that it would receive the first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in January 2021 if the trials were successful after reaching a preliminary agreement in August.
He had also signed an agreement on a COVID-19 vaccine being developed by the University of Queensland. Both vaccines will be manufactured locally by CSL.
READ: Australia expects to receive COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca in a few months
Meanwhile, Australia’s coronavirus hot spot in Victoria on Wednesday reported its biggest rise in daily cases in three days as the state boosted its contact tracing program to ease the spread of the virus.
Victoria, which is at the center of the second wave of coronavirus outbreaks in Australia, now accounts for about 75 percent of Australia’s 26,450 COVID-19 cases and 90 percent of its 781 deaths.
The state reported 76 new cases and 11 deaths from the virus in the past 24 hours.
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