TASHKENT, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Uzbekistan will almost double the number of volunteers involved in a phase-3 trial of a coronavirus vaccine developed by a Chinese company, the Uzbek Ministry of Innovative Development said Monday.

The trials of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China's Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical Co., Ltd. will now involve 9,000 volunteers, instead of 5,000 as planned initially, the ministry said.

The ministry explained that "the reason expanding trail coverage was the likelihood of a decrease in the number of study participants in the period between vaccination of the second and third doses of the vaccine."

Also, due to the stabilization of the situation with COVID-19 in Uzbekistan, it becomes more difficult to study the effect of the vaccine on recipients, since the effect of the drug is determined when the virus enters the body, it said.

The Central Asian nation has launched the phase-3 trial of the coronavirus vaccine in December last year.

So far, Uzbekistan has registered 78,755 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 621 related deaths. Enditem