Could The Oxford Coronavirus Vaccine End The COVID 19 Pandemic?

With extremely encouraging results, could the Oxford Coronavirus Vaccine be the one to end the ongoing global COVID 19 pandemic?

By: Ringo Bones

A senior British official has called the latest news on an Oxford University team’s potential coronavirus vaccine as “extremely encouraging”. The UK Phase I and II trial of the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine began in April 2020 and involved 1,077 healthy volunteers who were between 18 and 55 years old. Some of those volunteers received a second booster dose of the vaccine and they appeared to benefit the most. The vaccine was being developed by Oxford’s Jenner Institute in conjunction with the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, showed that it is safe and produced a strong immune results according to the research published on Monday, July 20, 2020 in The Lancet medical journal.

The Oxford Coronavirus Vaccine is made from a genetically engineered virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees. The vaccine caused a two-pronged immune response, says a news release from the Jenner Institute at Oxford.  First, within 14 days, it triggered a T-cell response, generating white blood cells that can attack infected cells. Second, within 28 days, it provoked an antibody response. Antibodies are able to prevent the virus from infecting cells when it is initially contracted the disease according to the release. Oxford is working with AstraZeneca to develop, manufacture and produce a coronavirus vaccine on a large scale. The unprecedented effort aims to make some 2-billion doses of the vaccine to be available globally, through partnerships with manufacturers in several countries, by early next year.

Lead scientist Prof. Sarah Gilbert told the BBC on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 that while the hope was still to be able to make millions of doses available by this autumn, there was still “absolutely no certainty” of that timeline, as the final Phase III trials were still ongoing and the roll-out of the vaccine on a large scale was also contingent on the manufacturing process and individual nations’ safety regulators approving it for emergency use. There were no dangerous side effects from taking the vaccine; however, 70-percent of the people on the trial developed either fever or headache.