The University of Oxford is recruiting volunteers to test a vaccine against covid-19 that it is developing. The goal is to test 500 people as early as May, Lancet Sarah Gilbert, a professor at the British university, told the Lancet scientific magazine.
In a first phase, the tests will cover volunteers aged 18 to 55 years who are in the initial or intermediate stage of the disease, and then extended to older people. In the total of the three phases planned by the university, approximately 5,000 volunteers should be tested.
"The best scenario is that, in the fall of 2020, we have a phase 3 effectiveness result [the one involving older volunteers]" and "the ability to manufacture large quantities of the vaccine," Sarah Gilbert told Lancet, cited by Bloomberg . However, the researcher stressed that these deadlines are the "best scenario" and "quite ambitious" and are therefore subject to change.
The first phase of the study at the University of Oxford will divide the approximately 500 volunteers into five groups that will be observed for six months, with the option of monitoring for up to one year after the start of the tests.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are 70 vaccines against the new coronavirus to be developed worldwide, with three of them already at an advanced stage, since they are already being tested in humans.
At a time when several pharmaceutical companies are struggling to try to come up with a vaccine that will result in the fight against the new coronavirus, the one that is at a more advanced stage seems to be CanSino Biologics, from Hong Kong.
The other two that are already being tested on humans belong to the North American company Moderna and Inovio Pharmaceuticals, according to a document released by the WHO.
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