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The vaccine, which is being developed by the university in cooperation with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, is also cheaper and easier to store than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The announcement would be good news for the government, which has already placed an order for 100 million doses, in addition to the 40 million it has ordered from Pfizer.
It follows news from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech on Monday that their own vaccine had been shown to be 90 percent effective in preventing disease after key phase 3 trials.
Meanwhile, Professor Andrew Pollard, who heads the Oxford-AstraZeneca effort, told The Sun that the “miraculous” work of his own team was being done at “record speed.”
He said: “We are optimistic that we will be able to demonstrate efficiency by the end of the year.
“We have worked tirelessly all year and we are eager to see the results in the coming months.”
In the pharmaceutical industry, “efficacy” refers to how well the drug performs its intended task.
According to analysts, government officials are hoping behind the scenes that Oxford’s vaccine will “catch up” with Pfizer’s because of cost.
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There is also the issue of logistics. Because of the way the Pfizer vaccine works, it must be stored in liquid nitrogen or another cold container capable of reaching temperatures as low as -80 degrees Celsius.
Sir John Bell, another director of the Oxford vaccine program, said this means that having the jab available through surgeries from local GPs “sounds a little unlikely to me.”
Still, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a news conference earlier this month that the UK’s 40 million doses of Pfizer vaccine could be “enough for about a third of the population.”
Britain’s population is estimated to be around 66.7 million, but each person will need two doses.
At the same press conference, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam warned the public not to get “too excited” by the news about the efficacy of Pfizer’s vaccine and said he was “still not sure” that the vaccine could be ready to roll out in the UK by Christmas.
However, he added that he was “hopeful” that was the case.
In May, the government announced that it would back Oxford scientists, as well as researchers at Imperial College London, with £ 84 million of new funding.
Oxford announced in early September that its vaccine trials had been suspended after a participant in Britain suffered an adverse reaction.
A few days later, the university said its trials would resume, and just over a month later, trials resumed in the United States as well.
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