Vaccine still possible this year, despite trial pause: AstraZeneca

LONDON - Drugs giant AstraZeneca on Thursday said a COVID-19 vaccine could still be available by as early as the end of the year, despite a randomized clinical trial being paused.

"We could still have a vaccine by the end of this year, early next year," the UK-based company's chief executive Pascal Soriot said in comments at a media event.

AstraZeneca announced Wednesday it had "voluntarily paused" its trial of a drug developed alongside Oxford University after a UK volunteer developed an unexplained illness.

An independent committee was drafted in to review safety but the company said it was a "routine action" designed to maintain the integrity of the trials.

"We will be guided by this committee as to when the trials could restart, so that we can continue our work at the earliest opportunity," Soriot said in a statement.

AstraZeneca's vaccine candidate is one of nine around the world currently in late-stage Phase 3 human trials.

In the US, the company began enrolling 30,000 volunteers across dozens of sites on August 31, and smaller groups are being tested in Brazil and elsewhere in South America.

The vaccine, called AZD1222, uses a weakened version of a common cold-causing adenovirus engineered to code for the spike protein that the novel coronavirus uses to invade cells.

After vaccination, this protein is produced inside the human body, which primes the immune system to attack the coronavirus if the person is later infected.

The director of UK scientific research charity the Wellcome Trust, Jeremy Farrar, said there were often pauses in vaccine trials.

He told BBC radio in an interview that it demonstrated the importance of conducting vaccine trials properly, with independent oversight and the involvement of the regulator.

"In the end, the public must have absolute trust that these vaccines are safe and of course effective, and in the end will hopefully bring the pandemic to a close," he added.

Britain's chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, on Wednesday said similar events should be expected but progress on vaccines and therapeutics was positive overall.

"Some will read out this year in terms of efficacy and safety," he told a Downing Street news conference.

"And I think there's a reasonable chance that... we can think about the possibility of vaccination next year sometime at larger levels."

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the pause was "not necessarily" a set-back, and said a similar pause occurred recently but was "resolved without a problem".

Agence France-Presse

UK coronavirus toll over 40,000; 10,000 deaths in care homes

LONDON - Britain's official coronavirus death toll is now over 40,000 with almost 10,000 dead in care homes in England and Wales alone, according to a statistical update released on Tuesday.

Some 40,902 deaths from coronavirus were registered by May 8, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), meaning the true toll will be even higher when deaths registered over the last 10 days are taken into account.

The ONS figures include deaths where COVID-19 is suspected or mentioned on the death certificate.

The government's official rolling tally, which was 34,796 as of Monday, only records deaths after positive tests.

Either way, Britain is the worst-hit country in Europe, and the government has been criticized heavily for its response to the outbreak.

The ONS figures show a sharp fall in coronavirus deaths in the week up to May 8, reinforcing ministers' claims that the country is past the peak.

Numbers in England and Wales fell from 6,035 to 3,930. Care home deaths accounted for 42.4 percent of the total -- up from 40.4 percent the week before.

Deaths in care homes fell at a slower rate than the population at large, and the total number of deaths in care homes in England and Wales now stands at 9,975.

A cross-party parliamentary committee looking into the government's handling of the crisis on Tuesday said testing had been "inadequate" in a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

"The decision to pursue an approach of initially concentrating testing in a limited number of laboratories and to expand them gradually... is one of the most consequential made during this crisis," they said.

"From it followed the decision on March 12 to cease testing in the community and retreat to testing principally within hospitals."

The decision meant residents in care homes could not get tests when the virus was at its most potent stage, they added.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock told parliament he was encouraged that care home deaths were falling.

A total of 62 percent of care homes in England had no reported cases of COVID-19 at all, he added.

Just over a quarter (27 percent) of all deaths in England from the virus were in such places, compared with a European average of about half, he told MPs.

"We will not rest from doing whatever is humanly possible to protect our care homes from this appalling virus," he said. 

Agence France-Presse