Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19: a former employee accuses a laboratory that has carried out tests on 1 – franceinfo

A subcontractor of the pharmaceutical group Pfizer, Ventavia, responsible for carrying out a small part of the clinical trials of its Covid-19 vaccine, is suspected of having committed several breaches during these tests, according to an article from British Medical Journal (in English), published Tuesday 2 November. The review quotes in particular a former employee of Ventavia, Brook Jackson, who worked there for two weeks during the trials of the vaccine of Pfizer-BioNTech, before being fired.

Brook Jackson accuses Ventavia of having made labeling errors during the double-blind tests (which consists of injecting the product, placebo or vaccine, without the doctor or the patient knowing what is being injected). She also mentioned the fact that the vaccines were not stored at the right temperature. The former employee says she communicated it to the US health authorities, the FDA, which she said did not follow up.

Ventavia played only a small role in the trials of this vaccine, developed by Pfizer with the German BioNTech. Indeed, the Texan group has conducted tests on a thousand people, while the vaccine has, in total, been evaluated on about 44,000 people around the world. These trials, demonstrating particularly high efficacy, have led to the authorization of the vaccine in many countries, such as the United States and the countries of the European Union.

According to another source cited by the British Medical Journal, this anonymous, Pfizer dispatched an audit of Ventavia, once informed of “problems” in the course of the tests. Contacted by AFP, the FDA refrained from commenting on this file but assured of “his full confidence in the data which led to support the authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine”.