Covid-19: death of a volunteer testing the vaccine from Oxford in Brazil

A volunteer who participated in the tests of the vaccine against the Covid-19, developed by the University of Oxford and the AstraZeneca laboratory, died in Brazil, announce official sources on Wednesday, without specifying whether he had received the vaccine or a placebo.

This is the first death of a volunteer taking part in testing for one of the many ongoing vaccine trials around the world.

The Bloomberg agency and the Brazilian newspaper O Globo claim to have obtained confirmation from anonymous sources linked to these tests that the victim had received a dose of placebo and not of the vaccine under development.

Phase 3 will continue

Oxford assured that phase 3 testing of this vaccine would continue, an independent committee having concluded that they did not pose a risk to the health of the volunteers.

"After the analysis of this case in Brazil, there were no concerns about the safety of these clinical tests and the independent committee, as well as the Brazilian regulatory agency, recommended the continuation of these tests", explains the university in a press release.

AstraZeneca declares for its part "not being able to comment on individual cases", but "confirms that all protocols have been followed".

During these tests in phase 3, the last before approval, a placebo is injected into half of the volunteers, designated as the “control group”.

He would have died of complications related to Covid-19

The deceased Brazilian has been identified by several media as a 28-year-old doctor who was on the front lines of the fight against the pandemic.

He would have died of complications related to Covid-19.

He worked at two hospitals in Rio de Janeiro and had graduated from medical school last year.

Brazilian regulatory agency Anvisa confirmed that it was "notified of this case on October 19" and received the report of the independent commission.

Some 20,000 volunteers took part in these tests in several countries, including 8,000 in Brazil, the second country most affected by the virus, with nearly 155,000 deaths.

Newsletter - Most of the news

Every morning, the news seen by Le Parisien

I'm registering

Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.

Learn more

In September, testing of the Oxford vaccine was suspended after the appearance of a "potentially unexplained illness" in a volunteer in the United Kingdom.

But the independent committee concluded that it was not a side effect of the vaccine.

On October 13, it was the pharmaceutical group Johnson & Johnson which also suffered a setback.

The American company had thus announced the suspension of its clinical trial of a vaccine against Covid-19, one of the participants having fallen ill.

The same day, another American group, Eli Lilly, announced in turn that it was suspending a clinical trial of its experimental antibody treatment for safety reasons.