Covid-19: Spain authorizes the third phase of Johnson & Johnson vaccine trials



[ad_1]

The third phase of the trial will take place in nine Spanish hospitals, first on volunteers who are not particularly at risk of developing severe forms of covid-19 and then on patients at risk, according to the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS). .

About 30 thousand people will participate in this phase of the clinical trial of the vaccine, which will be administered in two doses, distributed between Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Colombia, South Africa, the United States and the Philippines.

AEMPS did not specify how many volunteers will be deployed in Spain, adding that recruitment will begin “as soon as possible”.

20% of the volunteers will be under 40 years old and 30% will be over 60 years old. They will receive a dose of the experimental vaccine, called Ad26.COV2.S, or a placebo.

“Evidence is essential to ensure the quality, safety and efficacy of vaccines,” the Spanish pharmaceutical agency stressed, adding that the results will only be made public after they have all been finished and analyzed.

Johnson & Johnson had already developed the second phase of clinical trials in Spain and other countries in September.

An experimental vaccine must successfully pass three stages of clinical trials before it can be manufactured industrially. The third phase is the one that brings together a greater number of volunteers, with thousands of people testing the vaccine in the same period.

There are currently 11 experimental vaccines against covid-19 in phase three of clinical trials, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Two other pharmaceutical consortia, Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna, announced in recent days that their vaccines have shown levels of effectiveness in producing antibodies in volunteers above 90% in the third phase of clinical trials.

The covid-19 pandemic has already caused more than 1.3 million deaths worldwide since December last year, including 3,632 in Portugal.

[ad_2]
Source link