Posted by Michael Wonder on 20 Jul 2020
Trials of a vaccine and new drug raise hope of beating COVID-19
20 July 2020 - The latest tests with Oxford University’s vaccine, and interferon beta, look promising.
In early January researchers at Oxford University started work on a vaccine for COVID-19. At that time the illness was a tiny outbreak without a proper name. Six months on, with more than 600,000 people dead, the Oxford team is leading a race to develop a vaccine that could halt the pandemic. The vaccine has been raced into production around the world by AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish drug company, and billions of doses are planned.
But two key questions remain: is it safe and does it work? The first glimmers of the answers have just arrived, with the publication in the Lancet on July 20th of a paper about a trial of the Oxford vaccine, which began in April and involved 1,000 volunteers.
