UK vaccine could be ready by September

A vaccine for nearly half of Britons could be available by September after the British Government brokered a deal between Oxford University and drug company AstraZeneca to produce up to 30 million doses.

Business Secretary Alok Sharma said Britain would be first to get a vaccine, should trials be successful, and announced an extra £84 million ($171m) in funding to accelerate research and production at Oxford and Imperial College.

The Oxford vaccine is furthest along in human trials. Research leader Professor Sara Gilbert has said it could be ready by September.

Sharma also announced Britain’s first Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre in Harwell, Oxfordshire, would be open by June 2021 and able to produce vaccines for the entire population within six months.

Sharma said the speed at which Oxford was pushing ahead with its vaccine was “genuinely unprecedented” and promised that “the UK will be first to get access”.

“In order to definitively conquer this disease, we need to find a safe, workable vaccine,” he said.

“This new money will help massproduce the Oxford vaccine, so that if current trials are successful, we have dosages to start vaccinating the UK population straight away.

“AstraZeneca will work to make 30 million doses available by September for the UK as part of an agreement to deliver 100 million doses in total.”

All participants in the Oxford trial have now been given the vaccine and are being closely monitored.

The first human trials of the Imperial vaccine are due to start in June.

Sharma said the vaccine would also be made available to developing countries “at the lowest possible cost”.

Yesterday, deaths in British hospitals fell to 170, the lowest since March 24. Sharma said the UK was now in a position to begin moving carefully from level 4 to level 3 of its alert system, meaning the threat is substantial but it is safe to relax some measures.