China’s Sinovac Covid vaccine trial halted in Brazil

Daily US Times: After Brazilian health authorities reported a “severe adverse” incident, the clinical trial for a Chinese Covid-19 vaccine, developed by the Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech, has been suspended.

Brazilian health regulator Anvisa said the incident took place on 29 October, but did not provide further details.

Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac vaccine is one of several in final-stage testing globally.

The Chinese company says it is “confident in the safety of the vaccine”.

The firm has already been using the vaccine to immunise thousands of people at home in an emergency use programme.

Brazil has been one of the countries worst affected by coronavirus pandemic, recording more than 5.6m confirmed cases since it hit the country. The country has third highest tally in the world after the US and India – and nearly 163,000 deaths so far, according Johns Hopkins University data.

Anvisa said on Monday it had “ruled to interrupt the clinical trial of the CoronaVac vaccine after a serious adverse incident.”

What happened in the trial nor where it took place is not revealed yet. Late-stage trials for the Sinovac vaccine are also being conducted in Turkey and Indonesia, but neither of these countries have announced a suspension.

On Tuesday, Indonesia’s state-owned Bio Farma said that its own Sinovac vaccine trials were “going smoothly”, according to Reuters news agency.

According to local media, Dimas Covas, the head of Butantan, the medical research institute conducting the Brazilian trial, siad that the trial’s suspension was related to a death.

However, he insisted that the death was not related to the vaccine.

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