All Of UK Could Be Vaccinated For COVID-19 By Christmas, Claims Oxford Professor

As a world waits with bated breath for a coronavirus vaccine, a recent claim by a leader of the Oxford University coronavirus trials, comes as a huge relief.

Sir John Bell is Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University. He is leading a team working on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, and he spoke to Matt Frei on the possibility of a vaccine being available by Autumn.

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"When will you know for certain when this candidate vaccine is the right one?" Matt asked the vaccine developer, to which he said that "It's realistic to think we can get a pretty good signal by the end of August," reports a media outlet called Leading Britain's Conversation (LBC).

He added that the Oxford researchers have worked on overdrive on the development of the vaccine, sharing that it "normally takes 8 years to develop a vaccine, we've been working on this about 18 weeks."

YouTube/Sa?d Business School, University of Oxford

The professor predicts that if everything goes well as planned, vaccinations can begin as early as September, reported Express.co.uk. He said that clinical trials can be conducted in the way that the Jenner Institute scientists have done, which are much faster and much more efficient than the usual approaches to vaccine development.

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The Oxford-AstraZeneca¡¯s vaccine candidate against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, AZD1222, is currently in Phase 2/3 clinical trials in the UK. The vaccine will be tested in Brazil in July, where some 2,000 Brazilians will participate in the trials.

¡°There are a lot of wise people in the vaccine business who turned the problem across to the standard development programme for vaccines, which gave them a read-out in mid-2021,¡± Sir John Bell was quoted as saying. "What I don¡¯t think they acknowledged is that you can speed lots of the bits of the process up. You could manufacture in anticipation of regulatory result. That saves you three months at least, and maybe more," he said.

¡°I think even if the Oxford vaccine fails, we¡¯ll have changed the approach to development vaccines forever. All the other vaccine manufacturers are now following exactly the plant that we put into place back in January,¡± he said.

Sir John told LBC: "By September/October, I suspect there'll be vaccinations occurring in the developing world, but also in the US and possibly the rest of Europe"

He added that there's likely to be a similar programme of running vaccinations by late September, globally.

Disclaimer: While there have been several different types of treatments being given to COVID-19 patients across the world, there isn¡¯t any one drug that has worked as a sure-shot treatment yet. Don¡¯t self medicate/stock up and always consult your doctor/medical health professional.