Drug manufacturer AstraZeneca on Thursday said it may conduct an additional study to validate concerns amid concerns over the efficacy of i...
Drug manufacturer AstraZeneca on Thursday said it may conduct an additional study to validate concerns amid concerns over the efficacy of its vaccine.
The statement came after AstraZeneca and Oxford University acknowledged a manufacturing error that raised questions about preliminary results of the vaccine candidate. The problems in the drug’s efficacy that could arise due to this error is still unclear.
In an interview to Bloomberg, AstraZeneca’s Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot, in his first interview since data on its trial was published, said: “Now that we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study.” He said that it will probably be another international study, but this one could be done faster as they were now aware of the efficacy being high so a smaller number of patients will be needed.
Soriot also said he did not expect the additional trial to abide by approvals in the United Kingdom and the European Union.
The British government had on Friday said it has formally asked its drug regulator to assess whether the Oxford coronavirus vaccine should be authorised for use. United Kingdom’s Matt Hancock said he had asked the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to establish whether...
