A vol­un­teer in As­traZeneca’s Covid-19 vac­cine tri­al in Brazil has died, Brazil­ian health au­thor­i­ties said Wednes­day, trig­ger­ing fresh alarms over the fu­ture of the Ox­ford pro­gram. But lat­er re­ports not­ed that the death was in the place­bo group and As­traZeneca is­sued word that there were no con­cerns about con­tin­u­ing the study.

The Brazil­ian health agency An­visa said it had re­ceived da­ta from an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the is­sue, per a Reuters re­port. The re­port was then up­dat­ed cit­ing a source fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter say­ing that the tri­al would have been sus­pend­ed had the vol­un­teer been giv­en the ex­per­i­men­tal Covid-19 vac­cine, im­ply­ing that they were part of the place­bo arm.

Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, which is de­vel­op­ing the vac­cine in tan­dem with As­traZeneca, told Reuters that af­ter as­sess­ing the sit­u­a­tion, “there have been no con­cerns about safe­ty of the clin­i­cal tri­al.” An­visa added that the vac­cine tri­als will con­tin­ue in the wake of the death. The agency gave no fur­ther de­tails in­to the cir­cum­stances.

As­traZeneca $AZN share prices dipped about 2% as the news broke, but since lev­eled off and closed Wednes­day down 1.19%.

A com­pa­ny spokesper­son gave the fol­low­ing com­ment to End­points News:

We can­not com­ment on in­di­vid­ual cas­es in an on­go­ing tri­al of the Ox­ford vac­cine as we ad­here strict­ly to med­ical con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and clin­i­cal tri­al reg­u­la­tions, but we can con­firm that all re­quired re­view process­es have been fol­lowed. All sig­nif­i­cant med­ical events are care­ful­ly as­sessed by tri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tors, an in­de­pen­dent safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing com­mit­tee and the reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties. These as­sess­ments have not led to any con­cerns about con­tin­u­a­tion of the on­go­ing study.

Re­ports ear­li­er Wednes­day not­ed that As­traZeneca was sched­uled to restart its Phase III study in the US some­time this week. Dos­ing came to a halt world­wide in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber af­ter a British vol­un­teer de­vel­oped a con­di­tion thought to be trans­verse myelitis, a rare spinal in­flam­ma­tion dis­or­der.

Tri­als have al­ready re­sumed in the UK, In­dia, Japan and South Africa in ad­di­tion to Brazil, and the EMA has since ini­ti­at­ed a rolling re­view of the vac­cine can­di­date.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

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