Month: July 2020

Enlarge / Stephen Hahn, Commissioner of Food and Drugs at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on June 30, 2020, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Al Drago)

Any experimental COVID-19 vaccines aspiring to earn regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration will need to prevent or decrease the severity of disease in at least 50 percent of people, the agency announced Tuesday.

The criterium is part of a larger set of guidelines released by the agency for developing a vaccine to halt the spread of pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2—which causes COVID-19 and is now accelerating in much of the country after months of sustained devastation.

With the guidelines, the FDA tried to dispel fears that the rush to develop a COVID-19 vaccine may come at the expense of adequate safety testing. “We recognize the urgent need to develop a safe and effective vaccine to prevent COVID-19,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement. “While the FDA is committed to expediting this work, we will not cut corners in our decisions and are making clear through this guidance what data should be submitted to meet our regulatory standards.”

Enlarge / The VV16 payload is trucked to the Vega Launch Zone in French Guiana. (credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace)

The European rocket firm Arianespace has been trying to launch a Vega rocket carrying dozens of small satellites for the better part of a year.

First, the launch was delayed from mid-2019 after the Vega rocket experienced its first failure in 15 flights. (That happened in July 2019.) Early this year, after the rocket's failure was investigated and addressed, Arianespace set a date for Vega's return-to-flight mission on March 23. But then the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading around the world, and the European spaceport in French Guiana was ultimately closed for about three months.

Finally, the launch date was reset for June 18. The four-stage rocket and its payload of 53 separate satellites—ranging from 1kg CubeSats up to 500kg mini-satellites—was readied. All appeared go for launch with this "VV16" mission nearly two weeks ago—then the forecast turned unfavorable.