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Australia halted the production of a locally made COVID-19 vaccine on Friday after clinical trials produced a false positive HIV result among subjects involved in early-stage testing.

This prompted the Australian government to abandon plans to secure millions of doses of the candidate vaccine and instead boost orders of alternatives from AstraZeneca and Novax, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

The vaccine, which is being developed by the University of Queensland (UQ) and biotech firm CSL, is among the four candidates contracted by the government. Clinical trials, however, showed that the vaccine generated antibodies that interfered with HIV diagnosis and led to false positives on some HIV tests.

"The University of Queensland vaccine will not be able to proceed based on the scientific advice, and that will no longer feature as part of Australia's vaccine plan," Morrison said.

Australia has to abandon the development of the UQ vaccine to allay public fear of vaccination

Health Minister Greg Hunt said the candidate vaccine utilized a tiny amount of HIV protein as a "molecular clamp" but triggered an antibody response that could interfere with HIV screening.

Meanwhile, Department of Health Secretary Brendan Murphy said despite the vaccine’s promising properties to fight COVID-19, development needed to be canceled to allay concerns that the issue could ignite public fear of vaccinations.

"It probably would have worked very well as a vaccine, but we can't have any issues with confidence," Murphy said.

In a statement, CSL also said rolling out the vaccine could undermine public confidence by causing a wave of false, positive HIV tests.

"Follow up tests confirmed that there is no HIV virus present, just a false positive on certain HIV tests. There is no possibility the vaccine causes infection," CSL said.

UQ vaccine co-lead, Professor Paul Young, said, re-engineering the vaccine is possible but the increasing number of COVID-19 cases means they do not have the luxury of time to do so.

Prof. Young said,  “Doing so would set back development by another 12 or so months, and while this is a tough decision to take, the urgent need for a vaccine has to be everyone’s priority.”

With the latest development, Australia will order an extra 20 million units from AstraZeneca and 11 million from Novovax.

A vaccine needs to hurdle three stages of trials before it can then be considered for approval for public use.

Australia has yet to grant approval to a COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

As of this posting, Australia’s total COVID-19 cases climbed to 28,000 with 9 new cases recorded.

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