The suspension of clinical trials will only last for two days.
This Wednesday, the Brazilian health regulatory agency Anvisa authorized the resumption of clinical trials of the CoronaVac vaccine against Covid-19.
"For the sake of transparency, Anvisa announces that it has just authorized the resumption of clinical trials of CoronaVac", the organization announced in a press release.
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The tests of this product developed by the Chinese laboratory Sinovac had been suspended Monday after the death of a volunteer.
The suspension of these phase 3 clinical trials - the last stage before approval - had been greeted with "surprise" and "indignation" by the Butantan Institute, responsible for coordinating these tests in Brazil, with some 10,000 volunteers. .
A setback for Bolsonaro
According to this public institute which depends on the State of São Paulo, the "serious incident" reported by Anvisa to justify this interruption was "in no way linked to the vaccine", the police investigation into the death of the volunteer favoring the thesis of suicide.
"After evaluating new data presented (by the Butantan Institute), Anvisa has sufficient elements to allow the resumption" of clinical trials, said the press release from the regulatory agency.
This recovery is a setback for the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, the political opponent of João Doria, governor of São Paulo, who made an agreement with Sinovac to acquire 46 million doses (6 million produced in China, the others in Brazil).
The Brazilian president welcomed on Monday the suspension of testing of the CoronaVac vaccine, which he described as a personal “victory”.
He had called the Sinovac vaccine as coming from "this other country", and last month Jair Bolsonaro canceled an agreement to buy 46 million doses of the Chinese vaccine that had been announced by his own health minister.
Referring to "a very discredited China" because "the virus was born there", the president assured that his country was "not going to buy a vaccine that does not interest anyone".
The first doses scheduled for November 20
On Monday, João Doria announced that the first 120,000 doses of CoronaVac would arrive in São Paulo on November 20.
Another vaccine candidate was suspended for a while, following the onset of a disease in one of the participants, before trials resumed: the one developed by the AstraZeneca group with the British University of Oxford.
It is this vaccine that Jair Bolsonaro prefers to promote.
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The trial was suspended worldwide on September 6, but resumed after a few days in the United Kingdom and in the following weeks in South Africa, Brazil, Japan and finally the United States, the various health authorities estimating that the vaccine was safe as the disease was apparently unrelated to the vaccine.