A second volunteer in AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine trial, which is the one to be packaged in Mexico, developed a neurological disease.
The American newspaper The New York Times reported that a woman became ill after receiving the second dose of the vaccine.
The pharmacist said it did not yet have a diagnosis of this second case. However, an anonymous source familiar with the newspaper’s situation said that the participant’s disease had been identified as transverse myelitis, the same one that developed the first volunteer, who, according to The New York Times, is also a woman.
“If there are two cases, this starts to look like a dangerous pattern,” said Mark Slifka, a vaccine expert at Oregon Health and Science University, quoted by the newspaper.
The detection of the first case led to the suspension, on September 9, of the AstraZeneca trials, which were restarted three days later.
AstraZeneca, which is working with Oxford University on developing the vaccine, denied that the first volunteer’s case could have suggested severe safety issues in their trials. The diagnosis of transverse myelitis, she said, was “based on preliminary findings.”
AstraZeneca revealed details of its large trials for the coronavirus vaccine on Saturday, the third in a wave of rare revelations from pharmaceutical companies that are pressured to be more transparent about testing their best hope products. that the world has to end the epidemic.
Polls are finding that Americans are becoming wary of accepting the coronavirus vaccine. Scientists inside and outside the government are concerned that regulators, pressured by the president for results before Election Day on November 3, could release a vaccine that has not been tested or is unsafe.
Experts are particularly concerned about clinical trials of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which began in Britain in April, as the company has refused to provide details about the severe neurological diseases that two patients, both women, have had. Who received their experimental vaccine in Great Britain.
Those cases prompted the company to stop its testing twice, the second time earlier this month. Studies have resumed in Britain, Brazil, India, and South Africa, but are still on hiatus in the United States. Approximately 18,000 people worldwide have received the AstraZeneca vaccine so far.
The preliminary draft of this pharmaceutical company, which consists of 111 pages known as a protocol, ensures that its vaccine’s objective is to be 50 percent effective– which is the same limit that the Food and Drug Administration established in its guide to coronavirus vaccines.
