The U.S. administration is looking at accelerating a potential COVID-19 drug currently being developed by AstraZeneca PLC to be used in the U.S. before the nation's Nov. 3 elections, Financial Times reports.
The White House is examining several options including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration giving emergency-use authorization in October to AstraZeneca's candidate drug being developed in tandem with Oxford University, the report said.
AstraZeneca said no emergency-use authorization discussions had taken place with the government. A Health and Human Services representative said in the report that any emergency-use authorization claims for treatments before the U.S. polls are inaccurate.
The British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company said second- and third-stage clinical tests for its experimental vaccine were still being conducted in the UK and other countries and that the company wasn't expecting any effective outcome until the latter part of 2020.
According to AztraZeneca, the supposed emergency-use authorization could be based on a small part of research that the pharmaceutical group is doing with 10,000 subjects in Europe whereas the U.S. wants the treatment to be tried on 30,000 participants. The disclosure was made in the wake of reports that U.S. President Donald Trump will announce the emergency-use authorization for a convalescent plasma for COVID-19.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told top Democrats that the administration was looking at expediting a potential treatment during a July 30 meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Financial Times said quoting a source with knowledge of the matter.
A supply of the vaccine before the election would allow Trump to claim advances made in the fight against the virus that has already killed 170,000 Americans, Financial Times said.
Meanwhile, AstraZeneca has been granted regulatory permission to conduct part of a third-phase test for its experimental COVID-19 drug in Russia, Reuters said. The phase-3 test of the AZD1222 vaccine will have 150 subjects and will be carried out in four health facilities in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Reuters said.
