Brazil this month will start testing an experimental vaccine against the novel coronavirus being developed by researchers at the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc, Brazil’s health surveillance agency Anvisa and the Federal University of Sao Paulo (Unifesp) said.
2,000 WILL PARTICIPATE
Anvisa authorized the testing late on Tuesday. Some 2,000 people will participate in the trial, which will be conducted with the support of the Health Ministry, Unifesp said.
“The most important thing is to carry out this stage of the study now, when the epidemiological curve is still rising and the results may be more assertive,” said Lily Yin Weckx, coordinator of the Reference Center for Special Immunobiologicals (CRIE) at Unifesp.
Developers and researchers are looking to coronavirus hotspots, such as Latin America and Africa, where the illness is still on the rise, to test experimental vaccines as cases wane in Europe and elsewhere.