UK scientists working on Covid-19 vaccine say there could be jabs ready by September this year.
The Oxford scientists have said they are ’80 per cent’ confident they can have the vaccines available this year, a timeline earlier than previously anticipated.
Two Covid-19 projects in the UK and US have reported promising results in their early experiments.
Teams from Oxford University and the American pharmaceutical company Moderna have both revealed people in their studies are showing signs of immunity.
Each has been working on separate experimental jabs for months to try to protect millions of people from catching the coronavirus in future.
There are indications people being given the Oxford vaccine have been developing antibodies and white blood cells called T cells helping their bodies fight off the virus.
And experts at Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said participants in their trial – of a different type of vaccine – all successfully developed antibodies.
The vaccines work by tricking the body into thinking it’s infected with Covid-19 and causing it to produce immune substances that have the ability to destroy it.
While early research focused on antibodies, scientists are increasingly turning to a type of immunity called T cell immunity — which is controlled by white blood cells — which has shown signs of promise.
One source on the Oxford project told ITV News that “An important point to keep in mind is that there are two dimensions to the immune response: antibodies and T-cells.
Everybody is focused on antibodies but there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the T-cells response is important in the defence against coronavirus.”
Source: Africafeeds.com (additional materials from Daily Mail)
