AstraZeneca 3:39 Vaccine Participant Symptoms Revealed
(CNN) -
AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine trial in the United States has been on hold for more than two weeks.
Crucial questions remain about the neurological diseases suffered by study participants who received injections of the experimental vaccine.
US regulators are faced with the task of trying to find out if these diseases were random and unrelated to the vaccine or are related to it.
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AstraZeneca and its partner, the University of Oxford, have given several accounts of the sick volunteers.
"Your information needs to be consistent, and when it's not consistent, that raises questions," said Dr. Harland Krumholz, director of the Center for Outcome Evaluation and Research at the Yale School of Medicine.
Krumholz and other scientists said the nature of the participants' neurological diseases is important.
If the two study subjects had similar conditions, that would raise more questions about whether the vaccine is the culprit.
If your conditions are different, that could suggest they were random and not the result of the vaccine.
The test pause was announced on September 8.
In the UK, the trial resumed four days later.
The scientists told CNN that they are glad that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is taking the time to review the participants' illnesses.
"It makes sense that the FDA wants to continue investigating," said Mark Slifka, an immunologist at Oregon Health and Science University.
"Safety at the center of everything"
At an event Thursday at the World Economic Forum, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said "we must put safety at the center of everything we do."
He added that the public must trust the FDA when it comes to vaccine decisions.
"You really have to love conspiracy theories to believe that all the regulators in the world will agree to defend a vaccine that is not safe and effective," Soriot said.
"People have to accept that they have to trust someone at some point."
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