Coronavirus vaccine trials could be finished within months

Trials for a coronavirus vaccine could be completed within months, a key adviser to the Government has said.

Human testing of a potential vaccine is due to begin within the next week at Oxford University.

Professor Sir John Bell, a member of the Government’s vaccine task force and an adviser on life sciences, said that if tests proved positive, then the trials could be finished by mid-August.

He cautioned: ‘The real question is will it have efficacy?’

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: ‘Will it protect people, and that has not been tested and it will only be tested once you have vaccinated a significant number of people and exposed them to the virus and counted how many people have got the virus in that population.

‘So, we won’t even get a signal for that until May.

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‘But if things go on course and it does have efficacy, then I think it is reasonable to think that they would be able to complete their trial by mid-August.’

Sir John said of the candidate vaccine being tested at Oxford: ‘If we can see evidence of a strong immune response by the middle or the end of May, then I think the game is on.

‘Then, of course, there is the massive issue of how you manufacture at scale many billions of doses.’

It comes as other experts warned that there is no guarantee a vaccine will be found that is effective against Covid-19.

David Nabarro, professor of global health at Imperial College London and an envoy for the World Health Organisation on Covid-19, said that people around the globe will have to adapt to the ongoing threat of coronavirus.

‘You don’t necessarily develop a vaccine that is safe and effective against every virus. Some viruses are very, very difficult when it comes to vaccine development,’ Dr Nabarro told the Observer.

‘So for the foreseeable future, we are going to have to find ways to go about our lives with this virus as a constant threat.’

Professor Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University, who is leading the team developing a coronavirus vaccine, also said nobody can be sure that it is possible to find a workable vaccine.

She told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘That’s why we have to do trials to find out. The prospects are very good, but it is clearly not completely certain.’

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