The coronavirus pandemic It hasn’t given much in the way of good news. But now a trial of an experimental Covid-19 vaccine is giving us reason to hope.
UNITED KINGDOM WIRING
This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.
The results of a team from the University of Oxford show that its vaccine, developed jointly with the pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, is safe in humans and provokes an immune response. While this is far from being a fully functional vaccine, it is a promising and vital first step in obtaining one.
Here you will find everything you need to know about the Oxford study and what it means for the future of Covid-19 vaccines.
What is the good news?
The Oxford team found that their vaccine elicited an immune response and produced no serious side effects. The vaccine produced neutralizing antibodies, the type that defends cells against virus attack, in at least nine out of ten of those who received a single dose of the vaccine. The immune response peaked 28 days after the vaccine, but remained high until day 56, which was the last day covered by this scientific paper. The study is still ongoing.
The results are from a study of 1,077 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 55. Half of the participants received the new Covid-19 vaccine, while the other half, the control group, received a vaccine against a bacterial infection. Although no serious side effects were reported, about 70 percent of the participants developed fever or headache, although this was lower in a subgroup of participants who took acetaminophen at about the same time that they received the vaccine.
At this stage, the study cannot tell us whether people who have the vaccine are protected against contracting Covid-19, but it does tell us that the vaccine is safe to use and that it elicits an immune response.
So we still haven’t solved the vaccine problem?
No, not yet. But this news is still significant. A less encouraging result at this early stage would have been really bad news. Now that we know that this vaccine is safe to use, and is capable of boosting the immune system, we can begin to explore whether it really provides protection against those who are exposed to the virus.
Fortunately, that work is already underway. In Brazil, 5,000 people are enrolling in a trial in which they will receive the vaccine and will track whether those who have been vaccinated become ill with the virus. A similar trial with the same vaccine is underway in South Africa. In the UK, 10,000 more volunteers are being recruited for the Oxford trial, but here the background infection rate is relatively low, so there is a possibility that many vaccinated people will not come in contact with the virus anyway. , and it’s protective skills would never be tested.
The study also has some serious limitations. More than 90 percent of the participants were white and the average age was 35 years. To make sure the vaccine is safe for everyone, it will need to be tested on a much wider group of people, including older people, those with other health conditions, and those of more ethnic and geographically diverse origins. The authors say that people in these groups are being recruited into ongoing trials in the UK, Brazil and South Africa.
I’m listening to grounds for cautious optimism here
That sounds good. We still don’t know if having antibodies to Covid-19 really gives us immunity against the disease, but there are some encouraging signs that may be the case, at least in the short term. A small study on macaque monkeys found that animals could trap Covid-19, but they couldn’t re-infect themselves 28 days after recovering, and another study found that protection lasted for at least five weeks.
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