A University of Oxford group and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca have reported that their coronavirus vaccine is safe and stimulates a strong immune response.
The findings of the human trial, published in the British medical journal the Lancet involved 1,077 volunteers, which showed that the injection led to them making antibodies and T-lymphocytes (T-cells) that can fight coronavirus.
The findings are hugely promising, but it is still too soon to know if this is enough to offer protection and larger trials are under way.
Al Jazeera’s Paul Brennan, reporting from Oxford city, said the progress looks hopeful but there are no guarantees at this stage.
He said;
The ideal vaccine needs to be effective after one or two doses, it must be good for elderly people and target participants such as people with existing health conditions.
It also needs to be effective for a period of longer than six months and at this stage its too early to say whether or not this vaccine actually meets those criteria.
The vaccine is among 23 candidates now being tested in human trials, according to a running tally by the World Health Organization.
More than 130 others are in preclinical studies but none was yet to prove itself to protect people from infection or illness.
However, scientists caution that no one knows what level of immune response will be a shield against the virus in the real world through a cross section of humanity — young to old, healthy to those with preexisting conditions.
The UK has already ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, which is being developed at unprecedented speed.
It is made from a genetically engineered virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees.
It has been heavily modified, first so it cannot cause infections in people and also to make it ‘look’ more like coronavirus.
This means the vaccine resembles the coronavirus and the immune system can learn how to attack it.
With hopes soaring that a number of vaccines will soon emerge to quiet the global pandemic, governments around the world are making massive investments and pharmaceutical companies are readying production.
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