UK coronavirus vaccine to begin human trials for potential fall availability

Oxford University has been working on a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. On Thursday, it will begin human trials, announced Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Should the trials be a success, the Oxford team said that there could be millions of doses available as early as this autumn, according to the Independent.

Over £20 million was given to the Oxford team by the UK government, which has been "throwing everything" they can at trying to find a vaccine, said Hancock in a press conference. The government will also donate an additional £22.5 million for research to Imperial College London.

“The team have accelerated that trials process, working with the regulator the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency), who have been brilliant." said Hancock. “As a result, I can announce that the vaccine from the Oxford project will be trialled in people from this Thursday.”

“In normal times reaching this stage would take years and I’m very proud of the work undertaken so far," said Hancock.

The UK government is now looking into their manufacturing capabilities so that it can be accessible to people "as early as humanly possible," should the human trials be successful.

“Nothing about this process is certain. Vaccine development is a matter of trial and error and trial again. That’s the nature of how vaccines are developed,” warned Hancock, although he assured both Oxford and Imperial College London that the government will, “back them to the hilt and give them every resource they need to give them the best possible chance of success as soon as possible.”

“If you had a sailing wind and absolutely nothing goes wrong in all of that complex technical process and you have all the facilities available, you could have millions of doses by the autumn of this year." said Professor Andrew Pollard of Oxford University. “But to the very large scale, there’s a huge technical effort to get there and I think it’s unlikely that that could happen before the end of this year.”

"If the trials are successful there’s a big technical hurdle to upscale doses of the vaccine to the millions, tens of millions or even billions that would be needed for the world," explained Pollard. “It’s a very different manufacturing process to be able to make such large volumes of vaccine. The capacity to do that round the world is quite limited.”

The research being done by the Oxford team was helped a great deal by previous research, that was conducted during the outbreaks of SARs and MERs in the early 2000's.

“When this new virus emerged there was already work going on in Oxford on Mers coronavirus and a vaccine was being trialled on humans,” said Pollard. “What happened was that the genetic code from the new coronavirus was discovered in January and it was possible to go back to that genetic code and make these new vaccines very rapidly." He continued, “They’ve been developed in the laboratory and taken to a manufacturing facility in Oxford to make the first doses ready for trials.”

Should the UK be the first country to discover a vaccine, the country would likely be host to an enormous economic boom, assured Hancock. “The upside of being the first country in the world to develop a successful vaccine is so huge that I am throwing everything at it,” he said. “In the long run the best way to defeat coronavirus is through a vaccine."

“This is a new disease, this is uncertain science, but I’m certain that we will throw everything we’ve got at developing a vaccine," continued Hancock. “The UK is at the forefront of the global effort. We’ve put more money than any other country into the global search for a vaccine. And for all the efforts around the world, two of the leading vaccine developments are taking place here at home, at Oxford and Imperial.

“Both of these promising projects are making rapid progress and I’ve told the scientists leading them that we’ll do everything we can to support them. Coronavirus is a powerful enemy. But I believe that the power of human ingenuity is stronger."

“Every day the science gets better, we gather more information, we understand more about how to defeat the illness.

While the discovery of a vaccine would be great news, it wouldn't simply be the end of social distancing, warned Hancock, “But in the meantime there’s one thing we can do—and that is stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.”