AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial volunteer dies

A volunteer in a clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University has died, news reports quoting agency Reuters said. 

Brazilian health authority Anvisa but refused to divulge the name of the volunteer and details of where he lived, citing ‘medical confidentiality.’ 

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Reports said the testing of the vaccine would continue after the volunteer’s death. 

The Reuters report said the Federal University of Sao Paul also refused to divulge the details of the volunteer, saying he was Brazilian. The university is helping coordinate phase 3 of the clinical trials in Brazil. 

The US government had earlier said that it had plans to procure the UK vaccine. Reuters said the vaccine would then be produced it at its biomedical research centre FioCruz in Rio de Janeiro. 

On October 12, Johnson & Johnson halted its trial after a volunteer fell ill. The company said in a statement that illnesses, accidents and other so-called adverse events are an expected part of any clinical study, especially large studies, but that its physicians and a safety monitoring panel would try to determine what might have caused the illness.

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Prior to this, on October 8,  AstraZeneca halted its randomised clinical trial after one of the volunteers developed an unexplained illness. Covishield, developed by the company in collaboration with Oxford University, is one of the three vaccine candidates that are also undergoing human trials in India.