If it works, a vaccine would allow the world to return to a certain normality (representation)
London:
The University of Oxford hopes to present the results of advanced-stage trials on its COVID-19 vaccine candidate this year, although its principal research scientist has warned that it will still take some time for life to return to normal.
A vaccine that works is seen as a game changer in the battle against the coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.2 million people worldwide, shut down swathes of the global economy and disrupted the normal lives of billions of people .
“I am optimistic that we could reach this point before the end of this year,” Andrew Pollard, chief investigator of the Oxford Vaccine trial, told UK lawmakers when presenting the results of the trials this year.
Pollard said that determining whether or not the vaccine worked would likely come this year, after which the data would have to be carefully scrutinized by regulators, and then a political decision would be made on who should get the vaccine.
“Our part – we are getting closer but we are not there yet,” said Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group.
When asked if he expected the vaccine to start rolling out before Christmas, he replied: “There’s a small chance that this is possible, but I just don’t know.”
The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be one of the first of the major pharmaceutical companies to go through regulatory approval, along with Pfizer and the candidate from BioNTech.
Work on the Oxford vaccine began in January. Called AZD1222, or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, the viral vector vaccine is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus that causes infections in chimpanzees.
Pollard said the United States Food and Drug Administration had set the bar for a vaccine to be at least 50% effective – a level that would have a transformative impact on the pandemic.
“But being able to scientifically test 50% is much more difficult – it takes a lot more cases to happen in trials,” he said. “So I think we all hope that the vaccine is more effective than that, which means we will have an answer sooner.”
“GAME CHANGER”
If the Oxford vaccine works, it would eventually allow the world to return to some normalcy after the uproar of the pandemic.
When asked what success looked like, he said, “I think it’s good to have vaccines that have significant efficacy – so if, I mean, it’s 50, 60, 70 , 80 percent, whatever the figure – is a huge achievement.
“This means that from a health system perspective, there are fewer people with COVID going to hospitals, than people who develop cancer can have their chemotherapy operations – it’s a game changer. complete and successful if we meet these efficiency criteria. “
But Pollard, one of the world‘s top experts on immunology, said the world might not return to normal immediately.
“But unfortunately that doesn’t mean we can all get back to normal immediately because it takes time to deploy vaccines, not everyone will take them,” he said. “We will still have people who have this virus because it is just too good to transmit it.”
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
