If it works, a vaccine would allow the world to return to a certain measure of normality (Representational)
London:
The University of Oxford hopes to present the results of a late-stage trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate this year, although its lead scientific researcher warned that life would still take some time to return to normal.
A vaccine that works is seen as a game changer in the battle against the coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.2 million people worldwide, closed swaths of the global economy and turned normal lives upside down. billions of people.
“I am optimistic that we could get to that point before the end of this year,” Oxford Vaccine Trial Lead Investigator Andrew Pollard told UK lawmakers on presenting the trial results this year.
Pollard said this year will likely find out whether or not the vaccine worked, after which regulators should carefully review the data and then make a political decision on who should get the vaccine.
“Our two cents: We are getting closer, but we haven’t quite made it yet,” said Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group.
When asked if he expected the vaccine to start rolling out before Christmas, he said: “There is a small chance that that is possible, but I don’t know.”
The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be one of the first big pharma to be submitted for regulatory approval, along with the candidate from Pfizer and BioNTech.
Work on the Oxford vaccine began in January. Called AZD1222, or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, the viral vector vaccine is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus that causes infections in chimpanzees.
Pollard said the US Food and Drug Administration had set the standard for a vaccine to be at least 50% effective, a level that would have a transformative impact on the pandemic.
“But being able to scientifically evaluate 50% is much more difficult; many more cases need to occur in trials,” he said. “So I think we all hope the vaccine is more effective than that, which means we will have an answer sooner.”
“GAME CHANGER”
If the Oxford vaccine works, it would eventually allow the world to return to some normalcy after the tumult of the pandemic.
When asked what success was like, he said, “I think the good thing is to have vaccines that have significant efficacy, so yeah, I mean, that’s 50, 60, 70, 80 percent, whatever the number is, it is a huge achievement.
“It means, from a health system point of view, that there are fewer people with COVID entering the hospital, that people who develop cancer can undergo chemotherapy operations – it is a total change and a success if we meet those end points. efficiency “.
But Pollard, one of the world’s leading experts in immunology, said the world might not return to normal right away.
“But unfortunately, it does not mean that we can all return to normal immediately because it takes time to implement vaccines, not everyone will take them,” he said. “We will continue to have people contract this virus because it is too good to transmit.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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