I am sitting in a hospital reception and my breath is clouding my glasses. A few minutes ago, I had been running through wet streets late for my date. As the doctors and nurses pass by on the way to work, I am aware that I don’t look particularly well.
The last time I was at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London, it was because of the birth of my daughter. It feels very different today. I can smell the bleach used to clean the floors through my mask, and the adjacent seat is taped up, warning anyone to sit next to me.
Two hospital staff members in medical uniforms and masks are approaching, one with a sign saying “vaccine proof” like a taxi driver waiting at the arrival gate of an airport.
The signal is for me. I follow them in a slow procession, two meters behind, as the couple share gossip from the halls.
I’m at St George’s for an initial evaluation as a volunteer in the Oxford University trial to test the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine. In the coming weeks, I will learn what it’s like to participate in one of the world’s most promising efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Of all the vaccine trials underway worldwide, the Oxford effort is ahead of most of the pack.
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A few weeks later, on July 20, the researchers would announce extremely promising initial results, based on the first 1,077 people, suggesting that the vaccine is safe and triggers an immune response. “There is still a lot of work to do … but these early results are promising,” Sarah Gilbert of Oxford University said in a statement. The next step is to extend the trial in a higher dose to thousands of other people, as a volunteer at sites around the world. United Kingdom, as well as Brazil and South Africa. This phase of clinical trials, to assess efficacy on a much larger scale, is what I have signed up for.
Put on screen
My journey here started one night in late May when I stumbled upon a tweet from a philosopher at Oxford University about a vaccine study that I knew was moving fast. He had volunteered. So when my wife slept next to me, I also filled out the form on the group’s website and forgot.
A few weeks later, I am in a reused neurology room for the Oxford trial, seeing one of the lead scientists, Matthew Snape, on a large projector screen explaining what to expect as a volunteer in his trial: what we can and what we cannot do, how the science behind the vaccine works and what side effects to look out for.
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