By Ben Kerrigan-
A professor at Oxford University says a covid vaccine primarily for high risk individuals will be ready by Christmas’ .
Project leader Professor Adrian Hill believes the vaccine would be ready in time for those who fall under the high risk bracket, without specifying further.
Professor Adrian Hill, founder and director of the university’s Jenner Institute, said the jab will be approved ahead of the festive period to be used on medics and the elderly before the trial has finished.
Professor Hill told members of Oxford’s Magdalen College: “The initial licence would be for emergency use, not full approval.
“They will want to see more data on safety and maybe efficacy before they give a licence to vaccinate everybody.
In this country, our priorities are pretty clear… we’re going to vaccinate high-risk individuals before we vaccinate the young, the fit and healthy who are at lower risk. I think most countries will do that.
“So what we’re looking for this year is an ’emergency use’ authorisation that will allow us to go and vaccinate those most at risk as a priority, then early next year everybody else.”
According to Professor Hill, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has been ‘fantastic’.
He said: “That’s why we say this is one of the best countries in the world to do clinical trials – we have a well-informed, sensible regulator that makes decisions on the basis of a risk-based analysis, rather than a set of dogmatic rules.”
Phase 3 Trials
According to The Mirror Online Oxford vaccine is currently undergoing Phase III trials on over 20,000 participants in the UK, Brazil, South Africa and Japan.
The vaccine, called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is apparently made from a virus ChAdOx1- a weakened version of a common cold virus that causes infections in chimpanzees, that has been genetically changed so that it is possible to grow in humans.
They said: “By vaccinating with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, we are hoping to make the body recognise and develop an immune response to the Spike protein that will help stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from entering human cells and therefore prevent infection.”
It remains to be seen.