Highlights:
- People in the UK getting COVID-19 vaccine shots including people over 75 years of age
- Scientists at Imperial College London are immunizing hundreds of people in the UK
The scientists at the Imperial College London have said that there are immunizing hundreds of people using an experimental COVID-19 vaccine in the early trial after seeing no major safety issues in the small sample vaccinated till now.
Dr Robin Shattock, professor at the Imperial College London, told The Associated Press that he along with his colleagues have just finished a rather slow and arduous process of testing the vaccine at a low dose in the initial participants and now would expand the trial to close to 300 people which will include people over the age of 75.
He said, “It’s well tolerated. There aren’t any side effects,” and added that it is still very early in the study.
Shattock is leading the vaccine research at Imperial has said that he hopes to have enough safety data to start inoculating several thousand people in October.
As the infection of COVID-19 in the UK has dropped considerably, it has become difficult to determine if the vaccine works or not. Shattock said that he and his colleagues are also looking to test their vaccine outside of Britain.
He said, “We’re looking very carefully at the pandemic, at the numbers where the hot spots are and talking to collaborators that have the facilities to do these kinds of studies,”.
The vaccine of the Imperial College London uses synthetic strands of genetic code which is based on the virus itself. One it is injected in the muscle the body’s cells are then instructed to duplicate the spiky protein on the novel Coronavirus.
This should trigger an immune response so the body can fight off any future COVID-19 infection.
Also Read: Britain Signs Deals For 9 Crore Doses Divided Amongst 2 COVID-19 Vaccines
Last week the biggest COVID-19 study of the world began in the United States of America with the first of 30,000 planned volunteer getting immunized with shots which were created by the US National Institute of Health and Moderna Inc.
There are many other vaccines which are being made including one in China, and by the Oxford University. And based on the vaccine technologies, have started smaller final-stage tests in Brazil and other hugely impacted countries earlier this month.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) had said that multiple vaccine approaches are necessary for the novel Coronavirus claiming that the general success rate of the vaccine’s development is only around 10%.
Shattock said that as of now there are a number of COVID-19 vaccines which are in clinical trial stage and he predicts that at least some of them would come out as an effective vaccine for the deadly virus.
He said, “We have 20 vaccines in clinical trials, (so) we can be pretty confident that at least two of those will work,” and added that “It really depends on how strong the immune response needs to be to provide protection.”
Shattock also said that he is optimistic the the vaccine of the Imperial College London would work, however, must await the scientific data from the trial.
“I’m just going to hold my breath and wait to see,” Shattock said.
