The third phase of the trial will take place in nine Spanish hospitals, first on volunteers who are not at particular risk of developing severe forms of covid-19 and then on at-risk patients, according to the Spanish Medicines and Health Products Agency (AEMPS) .
About 30 thousand people, distributed among Spain, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Colombia, South Africa, United States and Philippines, will participate in this phase of the clinical trial of the vaccine, which will be administered in two doses.
AEMPS has not specified how many volunteers will be deployed in Spain, adding that recruitment will start “as soon as possible”.
Twenty percent of volunteers will be under 40 and 30% over 60. They will receive either a dose of the experimental vaccine, called Ad26.COV2.S, or a placebo.
“Trials are essential to ensure the quality, safety and efficacy of vaccines”, underlined the Spanish drug agency, adding that the results will only be made public after they are all finished and analyzed.
Johnson & Johnson in September had already developed the second phase of clinical trials in Spain and other countries.
An experimental vaccine needs to successfully pass the three phases of clinical trials before it can be produced at an industrial level. The third phase is one that brings together a larger number of volunteers, with thousands of people testing the vaccine in the same period.
There are currently 11 experimental vaccines against covid-19 in phase three of the clinical trials, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Two other pharmaceutical consortia, Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna, announced in the past few days that their vaccines have shown levels of effectiveness in antibody production in volunteers above 90% in the third phase of clinical trials.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 1.3 million deaths worldwide since December last year, including 3,632 in Portugal.
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