PARIS: French efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine suffered a fresh blow on Monday when the renowned Pasteur Institute in Paris abandoned its best hope for an effective jab following disappointing trial results.

The Paris-based research facility, named after 19th-century pioneer Louis Pasteur, had teamed up with US pharmaceutical giant Merck in May last year to develop a jab based on an existing measles vaccine.

Pasteur and Merck jointly announced that they were stopping further development together “following an analysis of the intermediate results obtained from phase I trials, which began in August 2020.”