Sarah Gilbert, an Oxford University professor, has said a Coronavirus vaccine could be ready by September “if everything goes perfectly.”
According to Metro UK, the professor of vaccinology said she is 80 percent confident that the vaccine being worked on by her team would be effective.
While human trials are set to take place in the next two week, Professor Gilbert told Times that;
I think there’s a high chance that it will work based on other things that we have done with this type of vaccine. It’s not just a hunch and as every week goes by we have more data to look at… I would go for 80 per cent, that’s my personal view.
This follows predictions that the UK death total, which currently stands at 8,958, could spike if there is an ease in the current lockdown restrictions.
The UK government has said it would fund the manufacture of the vaccine if it works and it would be availaible to the public.
The vaccinologist explained that the lockdown in the UK has made it difficult to test a vaccine because the virus is unable to spread.
Professor Gilbert believes that volunteers from places without lockdown measures who gets infected naturally, will accelerate the clinical trial process.
She said;
Nobody can promise it’s going to work. We don’t want to get to later this year and discover we have a highly effective vaccine and we haven’t got any volunteers to use. We don’t think we need facilities built, there are facilities that can be switched over.
According to Worldometer, a website which give real time update on the disease, the world as at press time, has recorded over 1.7 million coronavirus cases, 104,923 deaths and 390,522 recovered, of which the UK has 79,991 infected cases, 5,233 deaths and 9,875 recovered cases.
