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COVID-19 vaccine study paused after participant’s ‘potentially unexplained’ side effect
Late-stage studies of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate are on temporary hold while the company investigates whether a recipient’s “potentially unexplained” illness is a side effect of the shot.
In a statement issued Tuesday evening, 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.” The health 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. Late last month, 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.
News
8:57 a.m. Bradley University quarantines entire student body
Bradley University in central Illinois is requiring its entire student body to quarantine for two weeks because of clusters of COVID-19 on campus and is reverting to remote learning, officials announced Tuesday.
Officials of the private university said they have linked a spike of the coronavirus to off-campus gatherings. The Peoria university is requiring students to limit nonessential interactions, stay in their off-campus apartments, residence halls and take classes remotely beginning Tuesday.
The university said it has tallied about 50 COVID-19 cases so far, adding emergency measures are needed to respond to the outbreak without disrupting academic progress.
“Although it may seem extreme, this move to temporary remote learning and a two-week, all-student quarantine allows us to focus on the continuity of the educational experience for all of our students while giving us time to gather data on the full extent of the spread of the virus and assess the best way to proceed as a community,” Bradley President Stephen Standifird said in a message to students.
7:44 a.m. Appeals court upholds most of federal judge’s order to curb coronavirus at Cook County Jail
A state appeals court Tuesday upheld most of federal judge’s order in the spring that mandated wide-ranging coronavirus-prevention policies at the Cook County Jail but tossed out a key requirement to socially distance detainees.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling will likely not have have a significant impact on measures undertaken by the authorities to stop the spread of the virus at the jail, Sheriff Tom Dart’s spokesman Matthew Walberg said.
While the ruling allows holding two detainees in the same cell or in group housing, social distancing policies previously implemented at the jail will continue, Walberg said,
“Today’s decision affirms what we have been saying all along: We have gone to great lengths to protect our staff and detainees during this unprecedented crisis and we will continue to do so,” Walberg said. “Given the success we have achieved, we will continue to do everything we can to maintain and expand the protections we have put in place to protect our staff and detainees from COVID.”
Read the full report from Matthew Hendrickson here.
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Analysis & Commentary
7:48 a.m. Pandemic or not, state prisons must accept inmates from Illinois county jails
The easiest way to handle the COVID-19 pandemic is to let someone else deal with it.
Unfortunately, as far as prisons are concerned, that’s pretty much the philosophy the Pritzker administration adopted last spring when it announced without warning that the state’s prisons no longer would accept people convicted of crimes. Instead, sheriffs in all 102 counties, who had their own COVID-19 issues, were told they would have to shoulder the burden of keeping convicted criminals in their own facilities.
It is easy to see how that helped state prisons reduce the risk of coronavirus outbreaks. It didn’t help county jails, though. They are just as concerned as the state about maintaining as low a COVID-19 positivity rate as possible.
It would have been better to work out this issue collaboratively. Instead, the sheriffs sued, and on Aug. 3, the state started accepting convicts. When an appellate court revised the ruling later in August, though, the state reportedly slowed down the number of prisoners it would accept.
