AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine has entered Phase 3 trial, announces Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca has reached Phase 3 clinical trials. “That’s joining another group of vaccines that are very close to the end, and hopefully, approval,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Phase 3 trial is being implemented as part of ‘Operation Warp Speed’, a multi-agency collaboration led by the US Health and Human Services, which aims at accelerating the development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures for COVID-19 and delivering 300 million doses of an effective vaccine by January 2021.

The UK-based AstraZeneca is among the leaders in the race to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. 

“In the United States, we’re doing things that nobody thought would have been even possible. This is a process that would have taken, in some cases, years, and we did it in a matter of months,” Trump said on Monday. 

The National Institute of Health (NIH) separately announced that the Phase 3 clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine — AZD1222, will enroll about 30,000 adult volunteers at 80 sites in the US. It’ll be carried out to evaluate if the candidate vaccine can prevent symptomatic COVID-19.

“Positive results from preclinical research led by NIH scientists supported the rapid development of this vaccine candidate, which has also shown promise in early-stage clinical trials,” said Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group have developed AZD1222. The candidate vaccine was licensed to AstraZeneca for further development.