Volunteer in AstraZeneca’s Experimental Covid-19 Vaccine Trial Passes Away

A volunteer in the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine trials in Brazil has reportedly passed away. The Brazilian health agency Anvisa made the announcement yesterday afternoon. It’s unclear if the patient was receiving the vaccine or a placebo. Anvisa said they wouldn’t release further information for reasons of medical privacy except to say a thorough investigation is being conducted. They did also confirm the trials will continue as usual. It might be an indicator the volunteer’s death is not linked to the experimental vaccine trial. This all comes months after AstraZeneca was forced to briefly pause their global trials after a volunteer contracted a mysterious illness. It was later determined the patient had “an undiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis” which was “unrelated to the vaccine.” Yesterday, the U.S. saw almost 63,000 new Covid-19 cases and 1,100 more deaths. We have not seen numbers like these in over a month. Across all 50 states and U.S. territories, more than 8.3 million people have contracted the virus with over 222,000 lives lost.