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While scientists from across the world are working on developing the Covid-19 vaccine to help prevent this virus from taking a turn for the worse, a vaccine trial conducted by the researchers from the University of Oxford is expecting to provide with efficacy results by September. The manufacturing is already underway.

The team of researchers led by Sarah Gilbert, who is a professor of vaccinology, have recruited 500 participants in between the ages of 18 to 55 to test out the vaccine in an early and mid staged randomised controlled trial.

The same is going to be extended to older adults followed by the final stage trial that is expected to included over 5000 participants. Gilbert has clarified that even though the timing is ambitious, she is confident.

“We would hope to have at least some doses that are ready to be used by September. There won’t be enough for everywhere by then, but the more manufacturing we can do starting from now, then the more doses there will be," Gilbert said in an interview.

She said that there have been abundant volunteers who have been willing to be part of the study which is why they are currently not accepting any more volunteers.

Gilbert started her journey with vaccine research at the University of Oxford back in 1994. For the development of the Covid-19 vaccine, she received a grant of $2.8 million grant from UK’s National Institute for Health Research and UK Research and Innovation to get a vast team to speed up the process of the vaccine development further.

This group’s immunisation trials is the very first clinical trial that is going to happen. The World Health Organisation counts 70 participants in the development followed by three other in the overall human testing.

All of these are from CanSino Biological Inc. and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology; Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc.; and Moderna Inc. along with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The trial that Gilbert is conducted including 510 participants have been divided into five groups that will be observed for around six months with the follow up visit about a year after entering into the trial. One control group is also going to receive the second intramuscular shot of the vaccine around four weeks after the first one has been done.

This research is predominantly aimed to determine the safety, efficacy and the immunogenicity of the candidate vaccine that has been named as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. Apart from that, a group of participants are also going to be administered with a vaccine against meningococcal disease chosen randomly.

The ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 is predominantly a recombinant viral vector vaccine. This has been developed from a harmful virus which has been tweaked to enhance the levels of the surface spike proteins that are responsible for causing the Covid-19.

The vaccine prepares the immune system to recognise and attack the novel coronavirus by stimulating a T-cell response. The process uses similar approach to the vaccine that was developed by Gilbert and her team the time during the MERS virus spread.

Since that vaccine was found safe on the animals and the early stages of human trials, the same was confidently used for the development of the vaccine for the coronavirus as well.

“It’s going to be complicated trying to determine vaccine efficacy when the virus transmission in different places is going up and then going down again,” Gilbert further stated saying.

Another hurdle that they are likely going to experience is money. She said that even though they have received the necessary funding, it is not enough yet. It is not possible for them to start manufacturing the vaccine at a large scale with this much money. There are a number of things that first need to be put into place and that is exactly what they are doing at the moment.

Gilbert said that the work has been progressing at a very fast rate. She believes that at this pace, with the necessary cooperation and collaboration, they will be able to convene the spread or resurgence of this virus with the mass production of these vaccines by September hopefully.

By Somapika Dutta