The first
human trial of a coronavirus vaccine began on April 23 2020 in Oxford
University. More than 800 people were recruited for the study; the two
volunteers were first injected. Four hundred volunteers will receive the
COVID-19 vaccine, and the other 400 will receive a control vaccine, which
protects against meningitis but not Coronavirus.
One of
the first two volunteers who received the injection is Elisa Granato, a
scientist who wants to try support the scientific process of developing a
vaccine for COVID-19. It took three months to develop this vaccine by a team of
scientist at Oxford University. Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology
at the Jenner Institute, led the pre-clinical research and the Prof Gilbert has
a high degree of confidence in the vaccine that it will work. The vaccine has
to be tested in humans to see if it actually works and stops people
getting infected with coronavirus before its mass production and using it in a
wider population.
The
vaccine was 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 had already developed a vaccine against Mers, another type of coronavirus,
using the same approach and actually, it had promising results in clinical
trials. The only way the team will know if the COVID-19 vaccine works is by comparing
the number of people infected with coronavirus in the months ahead from the two
arms of the trial.
The Director
of the Oxford Vaccine Group, Prof Andrew Pollard leads the trial. He said that
the team was chasing the end of the current pandemic wave, if they will not
catch it, then it will not tell whether the vaccine works in the next few
months.
The local
healthcare workers are given more priority during recruitment into the trial,
as they are more likely 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. Older people tend to have weaker immune responses
to the vaccines. Researchers are evaluating whether they might need two doses
of the jab. The Oxford team is also considering a
vaccine trial in Africa, possibly in Kenya, where the rates of
transmission are growing from a lower base.
If the
numbers could be a problem, then deliberately infecting volunteers with coronavirus
would be a quick and certain way to find out if the vaccine was effective, but
it would be ethically questionable because there are no proven treatments for
Covid-19. Nevertheless, that might be possible in the future. Prof Pollard
said, "If we reach the point where we had some treatments for the disease
and we could guarantee the safety of volunteers, which would be a very good way
of testing a vaccine."
The trial
volunteers will be carefully monitored. They are aware of the effects of this
vaccine trial; some may get a sore arm, headaches or fevers in the first couple
of days after vaccination. In addition, there is a theoretical risk that the
virus could induce a serious reaction to coronavirus, which arose in some early
Sars animal vaccine studies in the past. However, the Oxford team says its data
suggests the risk of the vaccine producing an enhanced disease is minimal.
Scientists
hope to have one million doses ready by September if the vaccine trial is
proven effective, and dramatically to scale up manufacturing after that. Prof
Gilbert said that it is not really their role to dictate who would get the
vaccine first, theirs is to get a vaccine that works and have enough of it and
then it will be for others to decide. Prof Pollard added that enough doses would
be provided for those in greatest need in UK and other countries.
Another
team at Imperial College London hopes to begin human trials of its coronavirus
vaccine in June. The two institutions, the Oxford and Imperial have received
more than £40m of government funding to develop a vaccine. The UK Health
Secretary, Matt Hancock said the government and both teams are doing everything
possible to have a vaccine before the end of the year.
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for reading!
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Published
by Ruzeki on April 23, 2020, 2150 EAT
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