Washington DC: The American pharmaceutical giant, Johnson
& Johnson has said in a statement that the company has halted the covid-19
vaccine trial temporarily. The company has added that the trial had to be
paused after a trial participant has taken ill. The reason behind the patient
illnesses has not been disclosed, and the company itself has stated that the
illness was still a mystery to the company. Participants could enrol in the
vaccine trial by registering online. Normally, the companies would then put the
interested parties through rigorous filters before narrowing down the list of
participants to take part in the vaccine trial. Johnson & Johnson has said
that the online registration for the interested individuals who were willing to
take part in the trial was closed. Numerous vaccine candidates across the globe
are in works. Pharmaceutical companies have tied up with prestigious vaccine
manufacturers, research companies and universities to produce an effective
vaccine against the coronavirus. None of the vaccine trials would effectively
guarantee that the produced vaccines may work, but the companies and
universities were going ahead racing against the time to produce it. China has
the highest number of vaccine candidates in the world followed by the United
States.
In India, a vaccine trial is being conducted by the Serum
Institute of India (SII) in conjunction with Oxford University. The vaccine has
entered the critical human trials in September and is currently underway in
Pune, Maharashtra. In the past, the Oxford vaccine was also briefly paused but
resumed after. It is yet unknown when Johnson & Johnson would resume the
vaccine trial but according to the experts, the more vaccine trials being conducted,
the more chances of producing an effective vaccine against the virus. As of
today, more than 37 million people have had been infected with the coronavirus
and more than one million people have died so far. The current pandemic broke
out in March this year and shows no sings of ceasing as the death toll
continues to climb across the globe. The last major pandemic occurred in 1918
called “Spanish Flu” and it was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history
with number of deaths estimated between 17-100 million. The current covid-19
pandemic may play out differently as the world had changed drastically since
the Spanish flu but the experts insist that the world has to tread lightly
despite having massive advancements in science and technology.
