Final trials of a leading Chinese vaccine candidate have been halted in Brazil after a serious incident. This is the first time that a vaccine against Covid-19 developed by an Asian country has experienced such a setback.
A first for a Chinese vaccine
At the start of the week, theBrazilian Health Agency announced that a ” serious incident »Which occurred on October 29th had resulted in the interruption of vaccine trials Coronavac, developed by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech. Although the agency has not disclosed the nature of the incident, serious adverse events occurring in clinical trials include death, immediate risk of death, disability and hospitalization. In accordance with the regulations, the latter is currently investigating to determine whether the study should continue.
Such breaks are not uncommon in large-scale clinical trials. In recent months, pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca Plc and Johnson & Johnson were also forced to temporarily suspend their vaccine trials due to similar events. But it turns out that China has already started administering various vaccines, including Coronavac, to hundreds of thousands of people under an extended emergency use authorization, making the prospect of detecting serious adverse reactions at such an advanced stage of particular concern.
Last month, the Chinese Ministry of Science announced that it had vaccinated 60,000 volunteers as part of final clinical trials, without any serious adverse events being reported.
The race against time continues
The creation of a vaccine capable of providing a sufficient level of immunity against the virus now seems vital to allow a lasting restart of the global economy. In this race against time, the vaccine development processes, which usually take years, have been reduced to a few months in order to put an end to the pandemic of Covid-19 which has already reached more than 50 million people around the world.
The announcement of the suspension of testing Coronavac at Brazil intervened when Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE published preliminary results showing that their vaccine prevented more than 90% of symptomatic infections in tests on tens of thousands of volunteers.