Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday that in Australia, clinical tests for a vaccine jointly developed by the University of Queensland and the biotechnology company CSL have been abandoned because many participants who have been tested for HIV have shown false results after vaccination.
The prime minister said, on the suggestion of the scholars, that they will not go ahead with further development. The domestic vaccine was one of the four vaccines under development that the Australian government had requested.
Under the agreement, 51 million doses of the vaccine were to be delivered.
Scott Morrison also said the government has increased orders for other vaccines under development: from 33.8 million to 53.8 million for AstraZeneca and from 40 million to 51 million for Novax.
CSL stressed that none of the participants in the clinical trials had contracted HIV as a result of vaccination, the vaccine only caused test confusion.
I would like to emphasize at this point that there are no adverse health reactions and there is no way for a vaccine to cause HIV infection.
Andrew Nash, chief science expert at CSL said.
The expert also said that it was incorporated into the vaccine
Part of one of the proteins in HIV, this has likely caused the confusion.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said: “Although university researchers found that the fractional protein posed no health risks whatsoever for those who were vaccinated, a partial antibody response was identified in test participants.”
He explained that protein fragments can affect some HIV tests – which only look for these antibodies – and thus produce false results. As he said, this risk was known from the very beginning of the development and the test subjects had been informed of it.
Another expert spoke of how to fix the problem, but not soon, and the antibody is now needed.
In Australia, with a population of 25 million, about 28,000 people have been identified so far, 908 of whom have died from the disease.
