A volunteer who participated in covid-19 vaccine trial developed by Oxford with AstraZeneca has died in Brazil, the Brazilian health authority Anvisa informed on Wednesday. The authority said that the trial for vaccine would continue.
Oxford also confirmed that the incident will not affect the process of testing vaccine and said that safety of clinical trials is not to be doubted.
“All significant medical incidents, whether participants are in the control group or the coronavirus vaccine group, are independently reviewed. Following a careful assessment of this case in Brazil, there have been no concerns about the safety of the clinical trial and the independent review in addition to the Brazilian regulator has recommended that the trial should continue,” Oxford University told CNN.
The Brazilian health authority have declined to provide more details into the matter, citing the privacy of the volunteers involved in the trials.
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that the only condition in which trial would have been paused was if the volunteer had died after receiving covid-19 vaccine shot.
Brazilian newspaper O Globo had cited a source as saying that the deceased volunteer had received a placebo and not AstraZeneca’s vaccine shot.
Meanwhile, afrer the reports of ovid-19 vaccine volunteer’s death surfaced on the internet, AstraZeneca’s shares turned went down 1.7 per cent.
AstraZeneca is yet to comment on the matter.
So far, 8,000 of the planned 10,000 volunteers in the trial have been recruited and given the first dose in six cities in Brazil, and many have already received the second shot, said a university spokesman.
Oxford’s covid-19 vaccine in collaboration with AstraZenca has made the most significant progress among all the candidates being developed across the world. As of now, 8,000 of the planned 10,000 volunteers in the trial have received the vaccine shot in the six cities of Brazil.
Brazil is the second-worst country hit by the covid-19 pandemic, only behind the United States. Out of 5.2 million infected with the virus, 1,54,000 have lost their lives in the country.
