AstraZeneca has faced a failure in its COVID-19 vaccine studies

LONDON (Monitoring Desk) AstraZeneca announced on Tuesday that the studies it was doing to develop a coronavirus therapy had failed. The medicine, which was created by combining two antibodies, failed to achieve its primary goal of treating symptoms in individuals who had been exposed to the virus, according to the company. Phase 3 or final-stage clinical trials have been conducted to assess the treatment’s safety and effectiveness.

As part of the trial, AstraZeneca stated 1,121 unvaccinated adults were exposed to an infected person. It stated that the treatment AZD7442 lowered the probability of experiencing symptoms by only 33%, which was “not statistically significant.” Despite this, the business is continuing to do tests to see if the medicine can prevent Covid or cure more serious symptoms.

The development of AZD7442 was supported by the US government, which has agreed to receive 700,000 doses. Meanwhile, new safety concerns have been raised about AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, which was developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford. In some European nations, the vaccine has been halted due to concerns of uncommon blood clots.

On Sunday, a top official from the European Medicines Agency was quoted as saying that if alternatives were accessible, it might be worth ditching AstraZeneca’s vaccine. The EMA, on the other hand, claimed that Marco Cavaleri, the body’s head of vaccination strategy, had been distorted and that he considered the advantages outweighed the dangers.

It is up to EU Member States to decide on its use in specific categories and ages, based on specific factors including virus circulation and vaccine availability, a spokeswoman said. In more than 90% of instances of the Delta form, two doses of AstraZeneca/Oxford or competitor Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines prevented the need for in-patient treatment, according to a report published on Monday by British health officials.

Due to a spike in illnesses caused by Delta, which first surfaced in India, the UK government announced a 4 weeks delay in the full easing of coronavirus limitations in England on Monday.