In conjunction with the efforts made by international companies to conduct clinical trials with the aim of reaching the Corona vaccine, Johnson & Johnson suspended, Monday, October 12, 2020, the clinical trials of a vaccine candidate for Covid-19 disease temporarily after one of the participants contracted an unexplained disease.
The company said in a statement that an independent council to monitor data and safety, as well as the company’s clinical and safety doctors, are studying and evaluating the disease that the participant contracted, according to Reuters.
She added that the suspension is considered a normal matter in the large trials that are conducted with the participation of tens of thousands of people. She said that “stopping for the purpose of the study” from administering doses of the proposed vaccine is different from “stopping for regulatory purposes” by orders of the health authorities.
The trial on nearly a thousand healthy adults, which is supported by the US government, began after it was discovered in July 2020 that a single dose of the vaccine provides strong protection for monkeys.
Earlier, temporary results showed that a single dose of the experimental Covid-19 vaccine for Johnson & Johnson stimulated a strong immune response to prevent the Corona virus, at a time when the World Health Organization warned of the increasing number of virus deaths in the world before reaching an approved vaccine.
Reuters news agency said that the results of the vaccine called “AD26. Cove 2.S” showed that it can be tolerated well and equally in two different doses, but it is not clear if the elderly, who are one of the population groups most at risk of contracting the virus, will enjoy The same protection as younger people from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Johnson & Johnson’s move was not the first, as it comes after a similar step taken by AstraZeneca. Earlier, press reports reported that the “AstraZeneca” group, which cooperates with the University of Oxford, decided to “voluntarily suspend” clinical trials that it conducted around the world on an experimental vaccine. Against the Covid-19 disease caused by the Corona virus, it was developed by its partner, University of Oxford, after one of the participants in these experiments was infected with an “unexplained potential disease.”
The feverish race to produce a possible vaccine against Corona comes at a time when the number of virus deaths is approaching one million deaths around the world, while Reuters said that the number of infections reached more than 32.34 million infections.
