Coronavirus: UK vaccine to be trialled on patients from Thursday

[terry5]

Clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine will begin on people from Thursday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said.

The COVID-19 vaccine is being developed by scientists at the University of Oxford, who have said it has an 80% chance of success


Mr Hancock told the government's daily briefing that the Oxford trial and another at Imperial College London would each get at least another £20m of public money.

The Jenner Institute team at Oxford is starting production before the trial is complete and wants about a million doses ready to be sent out by September.

Mr Hancock said developing a vaccine is an "uncertain science" but that the two teams were making "rapid progress" and would be backed "to the hilt".


He said: "At the same time we'll invest in manufacturing capability so if either of these vaccines safely works then we can make it available for the British people as soon as humanely possible."
However, he cautioned that "nothing about this process is certain".

The Oxford vaccine, called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is made from a harmless chimpanzee virus that has been genetically engineered to carry part of the coronavirus.

The technique has already been shown to generate strong immune responses in other diseases.

Deals have already been done with three UK manufacturers, and several more abroad, to make the vaccine.

Professor Sarah Gilbert, from the Jenner Institute team, told Sky News that she hoped "up to 500 people" would be part of the trial by the middle of May.

Speaking at the weekend, she said it would be a "randomised control trial" and half of the people would get a different vaccine.

"We will be monitoring them asking them to contact us if they have any symptoms of coronavirus and then we will find out who is getting infected," she said.

More than 70 experimental vaccines are in development around the world.

Two in the US and one in China have already begun safety studies.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...ents-from-thursday-says-matt-hancock-11976681

 

[terry5]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1252633026779058180

https://twitter.com/x/status/1252647330509139968

Amazing news . Well done InshaAllah the vaccine has been found .

 

[Pakistani Fighter]

Won't be available atleast till next winter commercially

 

[Baby Leone]

wow...i think soon it would be available even before September this year.

 

[terry5]

Will be rolled out by May . British don’t thump chests InshaAllah they’ve discovered it .

 

[masterchief_mirza]

Great! Fitting for the institution named after Edward Jenner - the daddy of vaccination - to lead the way.

 

[terry5]

The first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vaccine has begun in Oxford.

Two volunteers were injected, the first of more than 800 people recruited for the study.

Half will receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and half a control vaccine which protects against meningitis but not coronavirus.

The design of the trial means volunteers will not know which vaccine they are getting, though doctors will.

Elisa Granato, one of the two who received the jab, told the BBC: "I'm a scientist, so I wanted to try to support the scientific process wherever I can."

The vaccine was developed in under three months by a team at Oxford University. Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the Jenner Institute, led the pre-clinical research.

"Personally I have a high degree of confidence in this vaccine," she said.

"Of course, we have to test it and get data from humans. We have to demonstrate it actually works and stops people getting infected with coronavirus before using the vaccine in the wider population."

Prof Gilbert previously said she was "80% confident" the vaccine would work, but now prefers not to put a figure on it, saying simply she is "very optimistic" about its chances.

So how does the vaccine work?
The vaccine is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus (known as an adenovirus) from chimpanzees that has been modified so it cannot grow in humans.

The Oxford team has already developed a vaccine against Mers, another type of coronavirus, using the same approach - and that had promising results in clinical trials.

Image captionFergus holding a vial of the vaccine developed by the Oxford team
How will they know if it works?
The only way the team will know if the Covid-19 vaccine works is by comparing the number of people who get infected with coronavirus in the months ahead from the two arms of the trial.

That could be a problem if cases fall rapidly in the UK, because there may not be enough data.

Prof Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, who is leading the trial, said: "We're chasing the end of this current epidemic wave. If we don't catch that, we won't be able to tell whether the vaccine works in the next few months. But we do expect that there will be more cases in the future because this virus hasn't gone away."

The vaccine researchers are prioritising the recruitment of local healthcare workers into the trial as they are more likely than others to be exposed to the virus.

A larger trial, of about 5,000 volunteers, will start in the coming months and will have no age limit.