Government also investing millions in manufacturing centres

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The UK Government is investing a further £84 million in the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine as ministers announced a groundbreaking deal which could make millions of doses available as early as September.

Business Secretary Alok Sharma said the additional funding would support teams at Oxford University and Imperial College

London engaged in the global race to find a vaccine that could finally end the devastating pandemic.

At the same time, he said Oxford had signed a global licensing agreement with AstraZeneca which could see it supply 100 million doses of a vaccine – with 30 million going to the UK – as soon as September if one has been found by then.

“The UK will be first to get access but we can also ensure that in addition to supporting people here in the UK, we’re able to make the vaccine available to developing countries at the lowest possible cost,” he told the daily No 10 press briefing.

While the announcement will be seen as a boost to hopes of finding a vaccine, Boris Johnson earlier cautioned that there was still a lot to do and that the search may never be successful.

Writing in The Mail on Sunday, he said: “There remains a very long way to go and I must be frank that a vaccine might not come to fruition.”

Mr Sharma said, however, that trials of the Oxford vaccine were “progressing well” with the phase one participants having received their doses earlier this week.

“The speed at which Oxford University has designed and organised these complex trials is genuinely unprecedented,” he said.

He added the additional research funding would help with the mass production of the vaccine so if trials are successful “we have dosages to start vaccinating the UK population straight away”.

In a further move, he said that the government was putting in £93m to accelerate the completion of the UK’s first vaccines manufacturing innovation centre.

The facility at Harwell in Oxfordshire – under construction – is expected to open in 2021, a year ahead of schedule.

Mr Sharma said once it was operating it would have the capacity to produce enough vaccine doses to serve the entire UK population in as little as six months.

In the event a vaccine was found before then, he said the government was providing £38m to build a “rapid deployment facility” which will be able to start manufacturing “at scale” this summer.