Coronavirus: UK Vaccine Trials to Start this Thursday says Health Secretary

UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson 

The UK government has announced that it will start trying a new vaccine developed against the Coronavirus infection by the University of Oxford from this Thursday on people.

Sky News reports that UK Health Secretary, Matt Hancock promises to give medical teams everything they need but says "nothing about this process is certain".

Scientists at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London have been working on a vaccine for some time now, and have been getting funding from the UK funding. Mr Hancock says they paln to invest another 20 million pounds in the development process going on at both schools.

UK Health Secretary, Matt Hancock

The Oxford vaccine, called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is made from a harmless chimpanzee virus that has been genetically engineered to carry part of the coronavirus.

The technique has already been shown to generate strong immune responses in other diseases.

Deals have already been done with three UK manufacturers, and several more abroad, to make the vaccine. British scientists have said they hope to have one million doses of a coronavirus vaccine ready to be deployed by September.

Professor Sarah Gilbert, from the Jenner Institute team, told Sky News that she hoped "up to 500 people" would be part of the trial by the middle of May.

Meanwhile, the Imperial College London team has been testing its vaccine on animals since February and clinical trials are expected to start in June.

More than 70 vaccines are in development around the world but - alongside the US and China - the UK will become one of the few doing human trials.

Source: Sky News