Oxford COVID-19 vaccine likely to be out in 3 months: Can it stop the pandemic?

Scientists working on the Oxford vaccine expect that a full COVID-19 immunization programme, which would exclude children, would probably happen within 6 months.

The COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Oxford University and British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca has been gaining the attention of researchers around the world for good reasons. Now, media reports say that the vaccine could be rolled out within three months in the United Kingdom.

Scientists working on the Oxford vaccine are hoping that regulators would approve it before the beginning of 2021, with every adult possibly getting a dose with as early as Easter.

Once the process is underway, it could take 6 months to distribute the vaccine, however, the timeline could be even quicker than that, government sources told media persons. They also expect that a full COVID-19 immunization programme, which would exclude children, would probably be significantly quicker than predicted.

Earlier on Thursday, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) also said that it has started reviewing data on Oxford's potential COVID-19 vaccine, in real-time, the first of such moves aimed at speeding up any approval process in the region for a vaccine. This indicates the possibility of the British vaccine becoming the first to be approved in Europe for COVID-19.

Mention may be made here that the Serum Institute of India had already signed a deal with AstraZeneca to produce doses of the Oxford vaccine in India. Trials of the vaccine are on across the country.

Vaccinating all of UK 'not going to happen'

Even if the Oxford vaccine is out before the end of this year, not everyone in the UK is going to get the shot.

In an interview with an international business newspaper, Britain's vaccine task force chair, Kate Bingham, said that vaccinating everyone in the country for the coronavirus was 'not going to happen' and only those at risk will be given the shot.

According to Bingham, there's going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It's an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, with the priority to be given on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable.

She opposes the idea of vaccinating the whole population, saying that administering the vaccine to healthy people, who are much less likely to have severe outcomes from COVID-19 "could cause them some freak harm".

The target is to vaccinate about 30 million people, compared with a UK population of about 67 million, if a successful vaccine against COVID-19 was found, Bingham told the newspaper.

Can a vaccine stop the COVID-19 pandemic?

Vaccination is seen as the only way to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over one million people worldwide so far. But a group of researchers has cautioned that the coronavirus vaccine that has the potential to protect the body from the virus will not be able to halt the pandemic alone.

While the United Kingdom government is hopeful that the Oxford vaccine would be available by this year-end, a Royal Society report said it would be a long process.

The researchers also cautioned that vaccine development has witnessed failures many a time in the past. Even if the vaccine is out for the public, it is not possible to vaccinate everybody within a month. This process could take about six months, nine months, or even a year, they added.