Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Brazil has suspended its final phase clinical trials vaccine Covid-19 made by Sinovac Biotech. The reason was, there was a serious bad incident, but the details of the bad incident were not explained.
The clinical trial of the Sinovac vaccine called CoronaVac was terminated on October 29, 2020, citing a statement from the Brazilian Health Agency Anvisa, as quoted by Reuters, Tuesday (10/11/2020).
Sao Paulo’s Instituto Butantan, which is partnering with Sinovac to produce the vaccine locally, said it was shocked by the decision and was looking into details about what happened in the study.
Instituto Butantan Sao Paulo’s director Dimas Covas in a TV interview denied saying that one of the volunteers had died but “the death was not vaccine-related” so he was surprised by the Brazilian Health Agency’s decision.
“There are more than 10,000 volunteers [vaksin] at this time, deaths could occur … These are deaths that have nothing to do with vaccines and so it is not the time to stop trials, “said Dimas Covas.
The health regulator, Anvisa, did not specify whether the incident occurred in Brazil – where the tests were conducted – or in another country. Nor does it say why the October minutes are only being published now.
Sinovac is the third vaccine whose clinical trials have been stopped. Previously, the clinical trial of the AstraZeneca vaccine was stopped because the volunteers suffered from a strange disease after being injected with the vaccine. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has also stopped clinical trials.
AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are continuing clinical trials because the cases are not vaccine related. The case of volunteer death also occurred in AstraZeneca after it was investigated that volunteers did not get the actual vaccine, only a placebo.
(roy/miq)
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