AstraZeneca announced on Wednesday it had "voluntarily paused" its trial of the vaccine developed alongside Oxford University after the volunteer developed an unexplained illness. An independent committee was drafted in to review safety, in what the company and the World Health Organization described as a routine step. The committee "has concluded its investigations and recommended to the MHRA that trials in the UK are safe to resume," AstraZeneca said. AstraZeneca's vaccine candidate is one of nine around the world currently in late-stage Phase 3 human trials. The AZD1222 vaccine uses a weakened version of a common cold-causing adenovirus engineered to code for the spike protein that the Covid-19 coronavirus uses to invade cells.

Source: Dhaka Tribune September 12, 2020 13:56 UTC