Several Suspended Trials of Candidates for Covid-19 Vaccines and Drugs Page all

KOMPAS.com – The efforts of scientists and a number of countries to find a vaccine and drug for Covid-19 are still ongoing.

This effort is a race against time to find a vaccine. There are 11 vaccines that are currently in phase III trials in humans.

However, not all testing processes went smoothly.

Several Covid-19 vaccine trials were temporarily suspended due to health problems that emerged in volunteers.

Here are some of them, summarized from the news Kompas.com.

Oxford

The Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford has stopped all clinical trials in early September 2020.

The suspension was carried out after a volunteer in England experienced a step of inflammation called transverse myelitis.

This is the second hold on the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine after being suspended in July 2020 because volunteers developed neurological symptoms.

However, the results of the investigation showed that the symptoms were not related to the vaccine.

Launch Financial Times, 10 September 2020, AstraZene CEO Pascal Soroit described the suspension as a temporary hiatus.

According to him, this pause is a routine action that must be carried out every time there is a potentially unexplained disease in an experiment.

“In large trials, disease will occur by chance but must be reviewed independently for careful examination,” said Soriot.

For a while it was postponed, this vaccine trial was resumed after receiving approval from regulators.

An independent committee designed to review the safety of vaccine trials has concluded its investigation and recommended that the Medicines Health Regulatory Authority (MHRA) continue the trial.

Although it was stopped, AstraZeneca hopes the vaccine will be available at the end of this year or early next year.

Also read: After being stopped, the Corona vaccine trial from Oxford was resumed

Johnson & Johnson

The Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine is the second vaccine whose trials have been temporarily suspended.

On its official website, J&J wrote that this suspension was carried out after a case of health problems in volunteers.

However, it is not certain what kind of health problems have arisen.

“We have temporarily suspended further dosing in all clinical trials of our Covid-19 vaccine candidate, including the ENSEMBLE Phase 3 trial, due to unexplained disease in study participants,” wrote J&J.

They emphasized that these health problems are not necessarily related to the vaccines given to volunteers.

Also read: The Government Sets 6 Priority Groups for Covid-19 Vaccines, What About Babies?

Eli Lilly and Co

Meanwhile, the Covid-19 antibody drug developed by US company Eli Lilly and Co was also suspended for safety reasons.

“Due to the utmost care, the independent ACTIV-3 Data Security Monitoring Board (DSMB) recommended this respite,” said Eli Lilly spokesperson Molly McCully, quoted from Reuters, 14 October 2020.

However, they did not explain in detail the impact of the drug trial known as ACTIV-3.