AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial volunteer dies after given placebo

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• The University of Oxford said that COVID-19 vaccine trials will not stop and will proceed even with the death of one of their subjects from virus-related complications.
• According to Oxford, an independent review that was done revealed that there were no safety concerns and had recommended that the study should continue.
• The volunteer who died was part of the control group and reportedly a doctor working on the front lines of the pandemic.

The University of Oxford announced Wednesday that coronavirus vaccine candidate trials will carry on despite the death of a Brazilian volunteer, adding that officials found no safety concerns.

Brazilian newspaper O Globo said the subject who died of complications from Covid-19 had been part of the placebo group. The man was a doctor who was a frontline worker.

But according to Oxford, which is working with AstraZeneca in developing the drug, officials who performed an assessment of the death found nothing to worry about regarding the safety of the clinical trial.

“The independent review in addition to the Brazilian regulator has recommended that the trial should continue,” said Oxford spokesperson Alexander Buxton in a statement, as per reports from Reuters.

In addition, O Globo also reported that Brazilian government officials are currently planning to purchase a completed vaccine for it to be manufactured at the FioCruz research center in Rio de Janeiro. Another vaccine currently in the resting stage made by Chinese firm Sinovac Biotec is at Sao Paolo’s Butantan Institute.

Early in September, Oxford stopped all of its AstraZeneca trials to determine whether the vaccine has caused adverse reactions seen in some subjects.

While trials resumed in Brazil and South Africa sometime later, they remain suspended in the US. However, Politico thinks the tests are likely to resume in the near future.

According to the outlet, the United Kingdom’s Health Research Authority wrote in a letter that the US FDA had already completed their study of the information of the participants concerned and has reached similar conclusions as to the other drug regulators including the MHRA. 

Source: The Hill