VOA常速英语2020--阿斯利康新冠疫苗引起脊髓炎症状（在线收听）

Pharmaceutical firm Astrazeneca announced the pause of the trial Wednesday, after one of the British participants fell ill reportedly with transverse myelitis. Inflammation of the spinal cord, the participant is expected to recover. The coronavirus vaccine developed by Astrazeneca and oxford university, is seen as one of the most promising of dozens under development around the world. After successful early stage trials, it had moved to phase 3 testing in recent weeks, involving 30,000 participants in the United States, Britain, Brazil and South Africa. Scientists emphasized that there is no indication yet that the participants illness is linked to the vaccine. You're giving the vaccine to very large numbers of people. And at any given time randomly by chance, it's quite possible some of those participants may have health problems that happen to come up. So I think it's normal to expect to see these events, and what's critical is to then pause and to investigate in more detail.

阿斯利康制药公司星期三宣布暂停试验，此前，据报道，其中一名英国受试者患上了横贯性脊髓炎。虽然患者脊髓发炎，但他有望康复。由阿斯利康和牛津大学联合开发的冠状病毒疫苗被视为全世界正在开发的几十种疫苗中最有希望成功的一种。在成功进行早期试验之后，该疫苗在最近几周进入了第三阶段的测试，在美国、英国、巴西和南非有3万名参与者。科学家强调，目前还没有迹象表明参与者患病与疫苗有关。很多人都接种了这种疫苗。在任何随机的时间，这些参与者中的一些人很有可能碰巧出现了健康问题。所以我认为这些事件的发生是正常的。关键是要暂停下来，进行更详细的调查。

That investigation is underway though it's not clear how long it might take. Britain's health minister sought to assure the public. It just shows how much of an emphasis we put on the safety of the vaccine, even though, of course, we're all desperate to see it work. This week, nine leading US and European vaccine developers issued a pledge to uphold safety standards for their vaccines. The US government launched Operation Warp Speed earlier this year, with almost 10 billion dollars of funding to accelerate the development of a vaccine, with a target date of January next year. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told health departments across the country to draft vaccination plans by October. Globally there are at least seven vaccines undergoing phase-3 trials, involving thousands of participants. It's a slow process because it depends on how many people are being infected. And of course that's spread across various different regions, and in different regions, you know that the number of cases every given week is varying from week to week. Even if a vaccine is approved, scientists say it will take time to roll out. We need to make large amounts of the vaccine. We need to fill it into little glass vials. And then we need to distribute it and then work out how to actually vaccinate people. To date, only one vaccine has been approved, the so-called sputnik 5 in Russia, which the government says will be rolled out to the Russian population starting in October. Experts have raised concerns about the vaccine safety as it has not entered phase-3 clinical trials. Henry Ridgwell for voa news London

调查正在进行中，但目前尚不清楚可能需要多长时间。英国卫生部长试图向公众保证。这正好说明了我们对疫苗安全性的重视程度，尽管我们都非常希望看到疫苗发挥作用。本周，美国和欧洲的九家主要疫苗研发商发布了一项承诺，将维护其疫苗的安全标准。美国政府在今年早些时候启动了“空间机战行动”，提供了近100亿美元的资金来加速疫苗研发，目标日期为明年1月。美国疾病控制和预防中心已经通知全国的卫生部门，在10月份之前起草疫苗接种计划。在全球范围内，至少有七种疫苗正在进行第三阶段试验，涉及数千名参与者。这是一个缓慢的过程，因为这取决于有多少人受到感染。当然，冠状病毒蔓延各地，你知道，不同的地区每周的病例数都不同。科学家说，即使疫苗获得批准，推出也需要时间。我们需要大量生产疫苗。我们需要把它装进小玻璃瓶里。然后我们需要分发疫苗，研究如何真正给人们接种疫苗。迄今为止，世界上只批准通过了一种疫苗，即俄罗斯的Sputnik 5疫苗，政府表示，该疫苗将从10月份开始向俄罗斯民众推出。由于该疫苗尚未进入第三阶段临床试验，专家们对疫苗的安全性表示担忧。美国之音记者亨利·里奇威尔，伦敦报道