In order to promote the development of the new coronavirus vaccine around the world, Japan, Europe and the United States have agreed to significantly reduce the scale when clinical trial participants do not gather.
When a pharmaceutical company develops a vaccine for the new coronavirus, it is necessary to recruit tens of thousands of participants at the final stage of the clinical trial and divide them into groups that administer real and fake vaccines and compare their efficacy and safety. There is.
On the other hand, since vaccinations that have already been approved are being promoted in Japan and overseas, it has become difficult to get many people who have not been vaccinated to participate, which has become one of the factors that have prevented the development from progressing.
For this reason, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has agreed with about 30 countries and regions such as the United States and the EU to reduce the scale of clinical trials to the scale of thousands if participants do not gather.
In clinical trials, we will not create a group to administer a fake vaccine, but will check the effectiveness of the "neutralizing antibody" that suppresses the action of the virus by checking how much it will increase after inoculation.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has already informed domestic pharmaceutical companies about this agreement, saying, "I think this will make it easier for domestic companies to develop vaccines."