Government spoke about a new vaccine for Covid that will be tested soon in UK.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that human trials of a potential Covid vaccine developed at the University of Oxford are beginning to be tested on Thursday 23/4. One member of the Oxford team said that if trials are successful, millions of doses of vaccine could be available for use by the autumn of this year.
- READ MORE: Covid: how to make a surgical mask at home
- READ MORE: Covid: how to make a hand sanitizer at home
Covid: government announces that a vaccine will be tested soon
It would potentially signal the start of the world’s slow emergence from an outbreak that has already claimed 175,000 lives and caused devastating economic damage.
Mr. Hancock said the government was “throwing everything” at the search for a vaccine and announced he was providing £20m to the Oxford team to help fund its clinical trials, with a further £22.5m going to researchers at Imperial College London. The Oxford researchers led by Professor Sarah Gilbert believe large-scale production could be underway as early as September.
A member of the Oxford team, Professor Andrew Pollard explained that if the trials are successful there’s a big technical hurdle to upscale doses of the vaccine to the millions, tens of millions, or even billions that would be needed for the world. Prof. Pollard said the Oxford project had been given a headstart by work already done on the Covid-19 Sars and Mers following outbreaks in recent years. “When this new virus emerged there was already work going on in Oxford on Mers Coronavirus and a vaccine was being trialed on humans.
What happened was that the genetic code from the new Covid-19 was discovered in January and it was possible to go back to that genetic code and make these new vaccines very rapidly. They’ve been developed in the laboratory and taken to a manufacturing facility in Oxford to make the first doses ready for trials.” Prof. Pollard made clear that the Oxford trial was not guaranteed to produce a successful vaccine. Imperial’s professor of global health David Nabarro, an envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organisation, has warned that it may never be possible to develop a safe and effective vaccine for the disease and that humanity may have to “find ways to go about our lives with this virus as a constant threat”.
Mr. Hancock also told that nothing about this process is certain. Vaccine development is a matter of trial and error and trial again. That’s the nature of how vaccines are developed. Mr. Hancock cautioned that hopes of a breakthrough on a vaccine should not tempt people to become ignore in social-distancing measures. Lockdown will continue until may 7 so still stay home, protect the NHS, and save lives is the right thing to do now.
Leave a Reply