COVID-19 vaccine trial halted in Brazil after severe adverse event

COVID-19 vaccine trials in Brazil has been halted. The vaccine in question is developed by a company in China and one of the volunteers has experienced, what they call it as ‘severe adverse event’. Sinovac Biotech pharma company has developed the CoronaVac which currently stands suspended and the information on its suspension was mentioned by the National Health Surveillance Agency in Brazil. The note has further mentioned that as the study has been interrupted, none of the new volunteers could be vaccinated.

A news agency said that the specifications and further details have not been disclosed due to health privacy concerns. After the recent incident, the health officials in Brazil opine that they would not hurry but would take time and study the data and evaluate the happenings and consider the risks about moving forward. On the other hand the organizers of the trial have insisted that the death of the volunteer is not related to the vaccine.

Jean Gorinchteyn, the health secretary for Sao Paulo said that they had an external event due to which the regulators were notified and insisted that the vaccine is safe. The phase 3 trials by Sinovac Biotech, started off in the month of July, 2020, which is a crucial phase for a vaccine to get the final approval. The company had plans to recruit about 130,000 volunteers.

The recent suspension of the trial marks a blow to one of the most promising vaccines from China. On the other hand Pfizer recently announced that its own COVID-19 vaccine is said to be more than 90 percent effective. Even Sinovac has insisted that it is confident about the safety of the vaccine. The pharma giant added that it would continue to talk with the Brazilian health officials on the matter. Sinovac added that work related to the clinical research in Brazil would continue and would be carried out as per the strict protocols.

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