Pune’s Serum Institute of India (SII) on Wednesday said it is continuing with the trials of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, PTI reported.

SII’s statement came after AstraZeneca announced the halting of the trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate ‘AZD1222’ after a UK volunteer developed ‘unexplained illness’. The Swedish-British pharmaceutical firm is developing the vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford.

The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) in August granted permission to SII to conduct Phase-II and III human clinical trials of AZD1222.

SII has entered into a manufacturing partnership with AstraZeneca to produce and supply 1 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. It is doing the clinical trials of the potential vaccine in India.

Commenting on the recent reports on AstraZeneca halting the trials in the UK, SII said in a statement: “We can’t comment much on the UK trials, but they have been paused for further review and they hope to restart soon.” It further said: “As far as Indian trials are concerned, it is continuing and we have faced no issues at all”.

AstraZeneca is considered to be the frontrunner in the race for vaccine against the coronavirus. It reportedly enrolled 30,000 volunteers in the US for the vaccine trials.

Novel coronavirus was first reported on December 31, last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. The disease has globally infected over 27.6 million people and killed 898,297 of them, as per the tally by John Hopkins University.