Fauci says Astrazeneca vaccine pause unfortunate but a safety valve

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that AstraZeneca's decision to pause global trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine was unfortunate but not an uncommon safety precaution in a vaccine development process.

"It's really one of the safety valves that you have on clinical trials such as this, so it's unfortunate that it happened," Fauci told CBS "This Morning" in an interview. "Hopefully, they'll work it out and be able to proceed along with the remainder of the trial but you don't know. They need to investigate it further."

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Andrew Heavens)