The UK's health secretary has just announced a potential Covid-19 vaccine developed by scientists at Oxford University will be trialled on human patients this week.
"The vaccine from the Oxford project will be trialled in people from this Thursday," confirmed Matt Hancock.
The announcement comes just days after scientists at Oxford University said they are 80 per cent sure they've got a Covid-19 vaccine.
"It’s a single-dose vaccine so you don’t have to get multiple shots and it's very manufactureable,” professor Adrian Hill, the Oxford team's lead researcher, said at the time.
Professor Hill said he was confident the vaccine would be available by September if it was successful.
Oxford University scientists hope to make a million doses by September. (Source: Other)
“We’ve been able to develop it in three months since the virus was discovered to make the vaccine, test it on animals find that it's safe and manufacture it to a standard so we can start testing people next week and aim to have a thousand people a month later,” he says.
At today's Downing Street daily briefing, Mr Hancock added he’ll back the scientists to the hilt but is aware there is no guarantee, with Most experts believing a vaccine will take 12 to 18 months to develop.
"Nothing about this process is certain, vaccine development is a process of trial and error and trial again," he said.
The UK government pledged a further NZ$40 million to the Oxford team to fund their clinical trials.
Oxford is one of a group of research teams that is receiving funding from a new government taskforce - which was announced last week - set up to find a vaccine.
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