Dr. Jeff Pothof receives COVID-19 vaccine (Credit: UW Health)
MADISON, Wis. - UW Health is halting their AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trials on Tuesday, Sept. 8 after a suspected adverse reaction in the United Kingdom.
A spokesperson for UW Health sent an email to WMTV with the announcement. In that statement, according to WMTV, the company said its “standard review process triggered a pause to vaccination to allow review of safety data.”
AstraZeneca didn’t reveal any information about the possible side effect except to call it “a potentially unexplained illness,” WMTV reported. The news site STAT first reported the pause in testing, saying the possible side effect occurred in the United Kingdom.
An AstraZeneca spokesperson confirmed the pause in vaccinations covers studies in the U.S. and other countries, according to WMTV. In late August, AstraZeneca began recruiting 30,000 people in the U.S. for its largest study of the vaccine. It also is testing the vaccine, developed by Oxford University, in thousands of people in Britain, and in smaller studies in Brazil and South Africa.
The first person was injected with the vaccine Sept. 2 at UW Hospital. Dr. Jeff Pothof, an emergency medicine doctor with UW Health volunteered to be "Patient 1," set to be injected twice over the next month, with researchers looking to see if he develops the necessary antibodies.
"And then I'll be followed up to seven or eight times over the course of two years to really understand, was the vaccine effective?" he said before the first injection. "Did I get sick? Did I not get sick? Were there any side effects that I would report?"
The study led by UW Health and the UW School of Medicine and Public Health involves 100 sites testing a total of 30,000 people.
About a third of participants receive a placebo. The study lasts approximately two years, with participants periodically undergoing physicals and testing for the virus.
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Participants will be randomly assigned to receive two injections of either the investigational vaccine (also known as AZD1222) or a placebo designed to look like the investigational vaccine but containing no active vaccine.
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