Vaccine test begins

UK researchers inject volunteers amid frantic race for cure

BRITAIN has started testing an experimental COVID-19 vaccine on healthy volunteers.

University of Oxford researchers gave injections to volunteers in a study that aims to include hundreds in hopes of telling not only if the vaccine is safe but if it protects people from the coronavirus.

Researchers created the new vaccine by inserting genes for a spiky protein that studs the outer surface of the new coronavirus into another, harmless virus. The idea: The immune system will spot the foreign protein and make antibodies to fight it, primed to react quickly if the person is exposed to COVID-19.

These kinds of studies often give volunteers either the real vaccine or a dummy shot. But this experimental vaccine may briefly cause soreness and maybe a low fever – meaning if a dummy shot was the comparison, the participants might figure out who got the real thing, said Dr Andrew Pollard, one of the Oxford chief researchers.

“That might influence people’s behaviour, perhaps make them more likely to be exposed to the virus,” which in turn would make it harder to prove if the vaccine worked, Dr Pollard said. So the Oxford team decided half the volunteers would be given an old vaccine against another disease that offers no COVID-19 protection but has similar side effects.

“It seems like the right thing to do – to ensure that we can combat this disease and get over it a lot faster,” volunteer Edward O’Neill told the BBC afterwards. Dozens of vaccine candidates are in various stages of development around the world. Experts say that even if early studies go well, it will be at least a year before any are available for widespread use.

Those making the fastest progress include China’s CanSino Biologics, which has begun the second phase of testing its vaccine candidate, and two US companies that are testing vaccines based on the virus’s genetic code.