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Enough coronavirus vaccine doses for everyone in UK ‘in first half of next year’ if trials succeed, research chief says
Enough vaccine doses are being made for everybody in the UK in “the first half of next year”, says the head of the team at Imperial College – if trials are successful.
Professor Robin Shattock warned there is still no guarantee that its fast-track research will produce an inoculation with immunity against coronavirus.
But he said: “Assuming funding is there to purchase, we could have that vaccine rolled out across the UK in the first half of next year.”
Success or failure depended on the level of immunity that would be needed to protect against Covid-19, something which was “very difficult to predict”.
But the UK was in a “strong” position” with separate research at Oxford University, Professor Shattock, said – and he hoped to “get an answer early next year,” he predicted.
Some 15 volunteers have been vaccinated for the trial so far, which will be ramped up to include another 200-300 participants in the “coming weeks”, the professor revealed.
Asked, on Sky News, if there was a chance that no vaccine being researched anywhere in the world would be successful, he replied: “I think that’s a very low, low risk.
“We’re very lucky in the UK that we have two very strong candidates, the one from Imperial, the one from Oxford, and so we’re pretty well placed – but there’s still not a certainty that either of those two will work.”
The comments come after Boris Johnson was accused of taking a risky gamble by refusing to join the EU-wide programme to secure a vaccine.
