Vaccine may be ready for some before end of year – Vallance

SMALL amounts of a coronavirus vaccine could be made available to certain groups of people before the end of the year, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.

Sir Patrick Vallance said good progress is being made on developing a vaccine that can fight Covid-19.

Sir Patrick said a number of candidates have shown they can generate an immune response that ought to be protective. He added: “We don’t yet know they will work, but there is increasing evidence that is pointing in the right direction and it is possible that some vaccine could be available before the end of the year in small amounts for certain groups.

“Much more likely that we’ll see vaccines becoming available over the first half of next year, again not certain but pointed in the right direction, which then of course gives the possibility of a different approach to this virus.”

Earlier, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock told ITV’s This Morning that a “mass roll-out” of a vaccine could be seen in the early part of next year if all goes well.

He added: “Hopefully in the first few months – there’s still a chance of it coming on stream before Christmas, but we’ve then got to roll it out and the first people who will get it are the people who are most vulnerable – people in care homes, older people.

“There’s a series of different vaccines, but we are talking about – essentially, for it to have an impact on how we live our lives – we’re talking about the start of next year.”

England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, also warned that the virus is not getting milder as some people have suggested.

He said: “What we’ve seen in other countries, and are now clearly seeing here, is that they’re not staying just in the younger age groups, and moving up the age bands and the mortality rates will be similar to – slightly lower than they were previously – but they will be similar to what we saw previously.”

Sir Patrick also said the size of the UK population with antibodies was still low, making the “vast majority” of people “susceptible” to Covid-19.

Sir Patrick said: “What we see is that something under 8% of the population have been infected as we measure the antibodies. It means the vast majority of us are not protected in any way.”