Vaccine for 30m could be here by autumn

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

Alok Sharma, the Business Secretary, said the UK would be the first country to get a vaccine, should trials be successful, and announced an extra £84million in funding to accelerate research and production at Oxford and Imperial College.

The Oxford vaccine is furthest along in human trials. Prof Sara Gilbert, who is leading the research, has predicted it could be ready by the early autumn.

Mr Sharma also announced that the UK’S first Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre in Harwell, Oxon, would be open by summer 2021 and able to produce vaccines for the entire population within six months.

Announcing the funding at the daily press briefing from Downing Street, Mr 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 30million doses available by September for the UK as part of an agreement to deliver one hundred million doses in total,” he added.

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.

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

On Sunday, deaths in UK hospitals fell to 170, the lowest level since March 24. Mr Sharma said the country was now in a position to begin moving from level four to level three of the new alert

‘If trials are successful we will have dosages to start vaccinating the UK population straight away’

system “in careful steps”, meaning the threat is still substantial, but that it is safe to relax some measures.

However, Mr Sharma said it was still crucial to maintain social distancing to avoid a “disastrous” second peak.

If the R rate of infection does not rise in the coming weeks, the threat level will be lowered to two, allowing schools and businesses to reopen.

“We will only take the next step when we are satisfied that we are safe to do so,” Mr Sharma added.

Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford, said: “Scientists at the Jenner Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group … have worked tirelessly to discover and develop this vaccine in record time.

“We now have a partner in Astrazeneca who are ideally positioned to help us evaluate the vaccine, manufacture it and distribute it to UK citizens as well as to the rest of the world.”