By Nathan Allen
MADRID (Reuters) – Johnson and Johnson’s Janssen unit will begin medium-term testing of its coronavirus vaccine in Spain, the Netherlands and Germany next week, Spain’s fitness minister said Friday as the US pharmaceutical company expands for its experimental vaccine.
The Phase II trial will last two months and will feature 550 participants in the 3 countries, adding another 190 people in Spain, Salvador Illa said at a press conference in Madrid.
“This is a vote of confidence in our fitness system,” Illa said, adding that it is the first human trial for a coronavirus vaccine that is approved in Spain.
The test will be done on other healthy people over the age of 18 to 55 and in those over 65.
Johnson-Johnson said it would compare the protection and ability to induce an immune reaction from the vaccine candidate’s single-dose and two-dose regimens, the company said in a statement.
Spain, which has the number of coronavirus cases in Western Europe, is also working with AstraZeneca through the European Union’s vaccine procurement programme to discharge enough doses.
J-J indicates that if newer trials are successful, the latest Phase III studies will begin, in which even more volunteers will get the experimental vaccine.
More than 150 vaccines are being developed and tested internationally to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, adding up to 30 in human trials.
To date, there is no approved vaccine, a legal vaccine in Russia before large-scale trials.
J-J is testing in the United States and Belgium, and this week added Chile, Argentina and Peru to the list of Latin American countries where it plans to conduct Phase III tests with 60,000 volunteers, in a canopy that will also cover Brazil and Colombia. Mexico
The company’s future vaccine uses “viral vectors” to generate immune responses to the technique followed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca in its experimental vaccine, as well as CanSino in China.
(Report through Nathan Allen and José Elas Rodriguez; edited through Mark Potter and Jason Neely)