LONDON: AstraZeneca's suspension of global trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine after an illness in a study subject in Britain has cast doubt on prospects for an early rollout of one of the most advanced COVID-19 vaccines in development.
The trial pause follows reports that the United States was aiming for fast-track authorisation or approval of a vaccine before November's presidential election. Leading US and European vaccine developers on Tuesday pledged to uphold scientific safety and efficacy standards for their experimental vaccines and not bow to political pressures to rush the process.
"People fall ill for a multitude of reasons, and the project team will now be reviewing in depth what is the cause of this person's illness and whether it is linked to having been given the vaccine or not," said Doug Brown, chief executive of the British Society for Immunology. "When you are inoculating 20,000 people, it is a foregone conclusion that at some point you will have severe adverse events. As soon as a link to the vaccine can clearly be ruled out, the trial continues," Chief Executive Michael Scholl said.
Backers of the Gamaleya candidate, the first Russian COVID-19 vaccine, noted that it is based on an adenovirus in humans, while the British contender uses an adenovirus found in chimpanzees.
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