Australian authorities have rescinded an order for 51 million doses of coronavirus vaccine from biotechnology firm CSL Limited after failed trials, the country’s health minister Greg Hunt said.

The health official stated that rollout of the CSL doses were suspended after clinical trial participants had false-positive HIV test results.

Mr. Hunt, however, explained that the participants were warned of a potentially false reading from the vaccine, which posed no risk of infection.

The inoculation, which was developed by CSL Ltd., in partnership with the University of Queensland would not proceed to phase 2 and 3 clinical trials, owing to time constraints in correcting the HIV dimension of the vaccine, the company said.

“Doing so would set back development by another 12 or so months, and while this is a tough decision to take, the urgent need for a vaccine has to be everyone’s priority,” a professor at the University of Queensland, Paul Young said in a statement early December.

The Australian government has long made additional purchases of millions of vaccines from other developers to cater for its 26 million population, health minister Hunt noted.

The global race for a COVID-19 vaccine has remained within the confines of trial and error, despite advanced innovative efforts by American pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer.