An “additional study” on its COVID-19 vaccine was needed, according to the head of AstraZeneca.
The head of British vaccine manufacturer AstraZeneca on Thursday said that an “additional study” on its COVID-19 vaccine was needed after questions popped up over the protection it offered.
However, in a report on Agence France-Presse, the additional testing was “unlikely” to affect regulatory approval in Europe.
Andrew Pollard, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said this week that further evidence would be available next month, but the test result was still “highly significant”.
“Now that we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy, we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study,” AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot told Bloomberg.
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Soriot also said that the additional trial was unlikely to delay regulatory approval in the European Union and in Britain.
There were high hopes for the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine, which Pollard had hailed as a “vaccine for the world” given that it could be easier to store and distribute, and cheaper to make.
AstraZeneca-Oxford had also promised to deliver its COVID-19 vaccine on a non-profit basis to the developing world.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health said that AstraZeneca was eyeing to conduct human clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine in the Philippines.
The said vaccine was jointly developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
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