Chile to start COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials in August

Chile's Health Ministry announced on Friday that the first trials of COVID-19 vaccines will begin in early August on some 3,000 human subjects. Health Minister said that the three vaccines that will be trialed are from Sinovac Biotech in China, CanSino Biologics in China and AstraZeneca with the University of Oxford in the UK.

According to the World Health Organization, 163 COVID-19 vaccines are being developed around the world, and 23 of them had started clinical trials involving humans. But only two have reached Phase 3 which requires large-scale trials with thousands of individuals to assess the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. In Chile, the number of coronavirus cases rose to 326,539, after 2,840 new cases were confirmed in the last 24 hours.