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RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil’s health regulator said on Monday (November 10) that it had suspended clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine developed in China after an “adverse incident” involving a voluntary recipient, a blow to one of the most advanced candidate vaccines.
The regulator, Anvisa, said in a statement that it had “ruled to discontinue the clinical trial of the CoronaVac vaccine after a serious adverse incident” on October 29.
He said that he could not elaborate on what happened due to privacy regulations, but that such incidents included death, potentially fatal side effects, serious disability, hospitalization, birth defects and other “clinically significant events.”
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The setback for CoronaVac, developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech, came on the same day that US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said its own candidate vaccine had shown 90 percent effectiveness, sending global markets skyrocketing. and will raise hopes of ending the pandemic.
Both the Pfizer and Sinovac vaccines are in Phase 3 trials, the final stage of testing before regulatory approval.
And both are being tested in Brazil, the country with the second highest death toll in the pandemic, after the United States, with more than 162,000 deaths from the new coronavirus.
CoronaVac has been embroiled in a disorderly political battle in Brazil, where its most visible backer has been Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, a senior opponent of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro has labeled it as the vaccine from “that other country” and instead pushed a rival vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
LEE: Bolsonaro of Brazil rejects Chinese vaccine against COVID-19
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