Russia and AstraZeneca announce joint clinical trials

"World Health": reviewing any side effects of the "Corona" vaccine is left to the national authorities

AstraZeneca said the trials would include people over the age of 18.

■ archive

Yesterday, the World Health Organization said that reviewing any side effects of the new Corona virus (Covid-19) vaccines is left to the national authorities in the countries concerned, in response to questions related to Britain's warning and asking those with a history of hypersensitivity to avoid injecting with the Pfizer vaccine. - Biontec », while the AstraZeneca laboratory and Russia announced yesterday, joint clinical trials of their vaccines against the virus.

"But people should not be concerned too much," WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said at a news briefing in Geneva.

Bear in mind that there are a number of candidate vaccines coming on the road at the same time ».

She added: "One of the vaccines may not be suitable for certain individuals, but you may find another suitable vaccine."

Last Tuesday, Britain became the first country to introduce the "Pfizer - Biontech" vaccine.

The drug regulator said, at a later time, that anyone with a history of hypersensitivity to a drug or food should not be injected with the vaccine, after two cases were reported that witnessed side effects.

Yesterday, a committee of advisers from outside the US Food and Drug Administration overwhelmingly supported the emergency use of the vaccine, while paving the way for its use in a country that has claimed more than 285,000 lives.

Harris said that the World Health Organization is reviewing third-stage trial data for many of the candidate "Covid-19" vaccines.

She added that the organization has not yet authorized the emergency use of any vaccine, but "the main thing that we keep in mind is safety."

In the same context, the Russia branch of AstraZenica said in a statement yesterday, “We announce a clinical trial program to assess the safety and immunity of (the vaccine) (AZD1222), which was developed by (AstraZeneca) and the University of Oxford, and the (Sputnik V) vaccine, which was developed by the Institute. Gamalia Research ».

The statement was published on the website of the pharmaceutical company in English and Russian.

The drug manufacturer stated that the trials will include people over the age of eighteen.

And the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which funded the development of the Sputnik V vaccine, said in a statement yesterday that on November 23 it had offered to «AstraZeneca» «the use of one of the vaccine vectors (Sputnik) in additional clinical trials of the vaccine».

The trials are expected to begin before the end of this year.

"A combination of vaccines against (Covid-19) may be an important step in generating broader protection, through a stronger immune response and better access," AstraZeneca said in its statement.

Russia is one of the first countries to announce the development of a vaccine for the virus, which it called "Sputnik V", after the satellite in the Soviet era.

Last week, Russia began a large-scale vaccination campaign that included, in the first stage, health sector workers and people most at risk of infection.

While the third and final phase of trials on the vaccine has not yet ended, its developers said that the results of initial trials showed 95% effectiveness.

The British-Swedish company AstraZeneca announced, earlier, that its vaccine showed an effective rate of 70%.

The laboratories of the two companies: the French "Sanofi" and the British "GlaxoSmithKline" (GSK) announced yesterday that their vaccine against "Covid-19" will not be ready before the end of 2021, after the results of the first clinical trials were less than what had been hoped.

The two groups said, in a statement, that the implementation of the program "is being delayed in order to improve the immune response in the elderly."

They now expect to have a vaccine available in the fourth quarter of next year, while they were initially hoping to submit an application for approval in the first half of 2021, and to deliver a billion doses within the same year.

This comes at a time when South Korea will deploy army forces on the streets of the capital, Seoul, to help medical teams deal with the high number of coronavirus cases and the increasing number of deaths and patients in intensive care rooms.

Prime Minister Chung Sae-kyun described the current wave of difficult crisis, and said he would deploy about 800 military, police and staff members to every neighborhood in the greater Seoul region to help track down potential patients.

The security services affiliated with the Ministry of the Interior in Gaza began to deploy in the streets of the Strip yesterday, in order to implement the strict closure, which will continue until tomorrow morning, according to the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency yesterday.

Follow our latest local and sports news, and the latest political and economic developments via Google news