Oxford coronavirus vaccine researchers hope for autumn breakthrough

Thank you for your reading and interest in the news Oxford coronavirus vaccine researchers hope for autumn breakthrough and now with details

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - Oxford university researchers working on a promising potential vaccine for the coronavirus are optimistic that data proving its effectiveness will be available to regulators as early as autumn this year.

Professor Sir John Bell, who is part of the team developing the vaccine in Britain with pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca, said he was “hopeful we’re going to start to get readout early in autumn as to whether this thing works or not”.

One of the leading candidates in the global race to counter Covid-19, the Oxford vaccine produced an immune response in its first human trials and boosted hopes for a way out of the pandemic.

“Everything looks pretty good with the vaccine,” Prof Bell told Britain’s Channel Four news. “This is a big study and should give us the power to detect an effective vaccine.”

Data from the trial could be handed over to regulators this year, but scientists insist that corners must not be cut to speed up approval for emergency use.

Professor Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told BBC radio: “It is just possible that if the cases accrue rapidly in the clinical trials, that we could have that data before regulators this year.

“Then there would be a process that they go through in order to make a full assessment of the data,” Prof Pollard said.

The trials hit headlines this week when the Financial Times reported that the administration of President Donald was considering fast-tracking the vaccine for use in the United States ahead of the presidential election on November 3.

One option being explored would involve the US Food and Drug Administration, which controls the introduction of new drugs, awarding “emergency use authorisation” to the potential vaccine in October, the newspaper said.

Prof Pollard said the process for emergency use authorisation was well established “but it still involves having carefully conducted data ... and evidence that it actually works”.

US scientific agencies have said any vaccine would have to be studied in at least 30,000 people to meet safety requirements.

Prof Pollard, the chief investigator of the global clinical trials of the vaccine candidate, said AstraZeneca would take the data to regulators once the scientists were satisfied with it.

The Oxford vaccine has now been tested on about 10,000 coronavirus patients in Britain, with work ongoing to administer it, as well as a second booster shot, to a similar number of people in Brazil and South Africa. AstraZeneca is leading a US trial of 30,000 people.

“The size of the trials still isn’t the issue here,” Prof Pollard said. “What you need is to have enough cases accruing during the time of observation in the trials.”

_______________

Health workers wearing Personal Protective Equipment use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the health of a resident inside the Dharavi slum during door-to-door coronavirus screening in Mumbai. AFP

Lucha Libre brothers, "Ciclonico," or Cyclonic, left, and Mister Jerry, ride a boat to their training site on Xochimilco's famous floating gardens on the outskirts of Mexico City. AP Photo

Medical workers wearing personnel PPE walk towards the isolation ward of a hospital in Sittwe, Rakhine State, western Myanmar. EPA

Ground staff sit in the spectators' gallery with a dog during the England- Pakistan cricket match at the Ageas Bowl, Southampton, Britain. Reuters

Fernanda Mariotti cradles a picture of her mother Martha Pedrotti, who died of Covid-19, at her home in Buenos Aires, Argentina. AP Photo

Health officials collect a nasal swab sample from a man to test for the coronavirus, at a civil hospital in Amritsar in India. AFP

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives at the prime mnister's office in Tokyo. AFP

A student, wearing a face mask and shield, returns to the Melpark Primary School in Johannesburg. AP Photo

A medical worker checks a visitor's blood pressure at a Covid-19 testing station at the National Medical Centre in Seoul, South Korea. EPA

Two Indonesian police officers put a protective face mask on a boy at a checkpoint in Depok, Indonesia. EPA

A worker wearing a protective mask and gloves stands inside the Nagoya Castle Hommaru Palace in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Bloomberg

Updated: August 25, 2020 02:48 PM

These were the details of the news Oxford coronavirus vaccine researchers hope for autumn breakthrough for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.

It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at The National and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.

NEXT Barrage of Russian attacks aims to cut Ukraine's lights