Astrazeneca's COVID-19 Vaccine Trials to Continue Even After a Volunteer Dies

A volunteer in a clinical trial for AstraZeneca and Oxford University's COVID-19 vaccine had died. This was announced by the Brazilian health authority Anvisa on Wednesday, October 21. Despite that, the organization said that there is no reason to stop the clinical trials, which indicate that the death was not linked to the vaccine candidate, CNN reported.

"There have been no concerns about the safety of the clinical trial," the Oxford University confirmed its plans to continue the clinical trials. Meanwhile, AstraZeneca declined to comment on the matter.

Volunteer Died But Clinical Trials to Continue

According to Anvisa, they were notified on Monday of the death of the volunteer. Still, it was recommended by the International Evaluation and Security Committee, who was overseeing the clinical trial, to continue. The health authority did not release any further statements due to medical privacy.

A source familiar to Reuters said that the trial was not suspended because the COVID-19 vaccine candidate did not cause the volunteer's death. The volunteer did not receive the vaccine because he was part of the control group that was administered by a meningitis jab.

Moreover, an independent review committee also recommended that the trial continue, and the Federal University of Sao Paulo earlier confirmed that the volunteer was a Brazilian but did not give any further details.

A statement from the Brazilian university said that everything is proceeding as expected without any record of serious vaccine-related vaccine injuries or complications from the participating volunteers.

Among the volunteers in the trial, half of them received the vaccine candidate from Oxford University ad the other half is given the licensed vaccine for meningitis, BBC reported. Neither the volunteers nor their families know which vaccine was administered to them, which allows researchers to compare the results of the two groups to know if the vaccine is really effective or not.

The vaccine experts said that volunteers in the clinical trial could become ill in the process due to several reasons that may not be related to the vaccine. Virology professor Ian Jones from Britain's University of Reading said that in any large trial, morbidity and mortality could happen sometime in the trial, but this could also occur whether they participated or not.

A Brief Pause in AstraZeneca Vaccine Trial

AstraZeneca's vaccine trial was first put on a brief pause last July to give way for the investigation on a volunteer's illness, which was later on identified as an "undiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis," and an independent review said that the illness was unrelated to the vaccine.

Moreover, the global trials of AstraZeneca were suspended due to another volunteer's illness in which the 37-year-old woman experienced transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, after she was administered with the second dose of the vaccine and hospitalized on September 5, CNN reported.

The trials on the US remain on pause, but it has already resumed in the UK.