Brazil’s health regulator has suspended a clinical trial for China’s Sinovac coronavirus vaccine citing a severe adverse event, surprising the trial organisers who countered there had been a death but it was unrelated to the vaccine.
The health regulator, Anvisa, said on Monday the event took place on Oct. 29 but did not specify if the incident took place in Brazil or in another country. It also did not give an indication of how long the suspension of the large late-stage trial might last. Sinovac did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sinovac’s vaccine is among the three experimental COVID-19 vaccines that China has been using to inoculate hundreds of thousands of people under an emergency use programme. A Chinese health official said on Oct. 20 that serious side effects have not been observed in clinical trials.