AstraZeneca is still on target to submit data on its Covid-19 vaccine candidate to regulators before the end of the year, providing it can restart trials halted temporarily after a participant fell ill, the company’s chief executive has said.

Talking at an event organised by news organisation Tortoise, Pascal Soriot said that if the safety monitoring committee examining a possible link between the illness and the vaccine gave the go-ahead to resume, “I still think we are on track for having a set of data we would submit before the end of the year and then it depends how fast regulators will review it and give approval”.

A vaccine “by the end of this year, early next year” was still possible, he added. As well as the AstraZeneca-Oxford university vaccine, two others — manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna — were “also advancing quite quickly”, he said.