Trial samples handled inside the Oxford Vaccine Group laboratory at Oxford University. Photograph: John Cairns/AP
While there have been many stories over the course of the pandemic about new drugs, potential vaccines, and so forth, nothing has been as promising as the news that the vaccine developed by Oxford University, UK, elicits both an antibody and T-cell response in all those who received the test vaccine. Both antibodies and T-cells are believed to give protection against CoVid-19 infection.
Oxford’s Covid-19 vaccine produces a good immune response, reveals new study.
— University of Oxford (@UniofOxford) July 20, 2020
Teams at @VaccineTrials and @OxfordVacGroup have found there were no safety concerns, and the vaccine stimulated strong immune responses: https://t.co/krqRzXMh7B pic.twitter.com/Svd3MhCXWZ
The trial involved over 1,000 volunteers in the UK. The vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is developed from a common cold virus that usually affects chimpanzees. This virus has been genetically modified to 'look' like CoVid-19, thereby likely causing the human body to be trained to fight any real CoVid-19 infection it meets in the real world.
So confident is the UK government of the newly developed vaccine it has already ordered 100 million doses. Mass production of these doses will begin by September, even before further tests on the vaccine are complete.
90% of the 1,000 volunteers in the trial developed significant neutralising antibodies with just one dose of the vaccine, and the other 10% developed antibodies after a second dose. While none suffered any serious health consequences 7 out of 10 experienced headache or fever which passed after a couple of days.
Sample from patients are analysed as part of the trial.
Prof. Sarah Gilbert, from the University of Oxford, stated:
"There is still much work to be done before we can confirm if our vaccine will help manage the CoVid-19 pandemic, but these early results hold promise."
While it is now strongly believed the vaccine offers protection, this has not yet been verified for certain. The vaccine may stop an individual being infected, or it may simply stop an individual becoming severely ill. There is also the possibility that it will not work at all, however this now seems unlikely given the data emerging from the research.
Prof. Andrew Pollard, from the Oxford team, said to the BBC:
"We're really pleased with the results published today as we're seeing both neutralising antibodies and T-cells. They're extremely promising and we believe the type of response that may be associated with protection. But the key question everyone wants to know is does the vaccine work, does it offer protection... and we're in a waiting game."
To test the workability of the vaccine in the real world, with individuals facing real-life exposure to CoVid-19, the Oxford team will now carry out large scale vaccinations in Brazil, the United States and South Africa, where the virus is currently much more prevalent.
Some others have also suggested experiments to deliberately try to infect vaccinated people with CoVid-19 to speed up the process of seeing whether the vaccine works. However, this creates huge ethical dilemmas and thus far it does not seem to be a route that many scientists wish to go down.
While we wait for further news, it now seems likely than humankind has developed a way to potentially defeat the virus that has brought the world to a standstill and killed hundreds-of-thousands over the last few months.
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