Oxford COVID-19 vaccine results due next month, raising hopes of 2021 rollout

Unclear if vaccine will be rolled out before Christmas 

UK expects Oxford, Pfizer data in early December

The University of Oxford hopes to present late-stage trial results on its COVID-19 vaccine

candidate this year, raising hopes that Britain could start to roll out a successful vaccine in late

December or early 2021.

A vaccine that works is seen as a game-changer in the battle against the coronavirus, which has

killed more than 1.2 million people worldwide, shuttered swathes of the global economy and

turned normal life upside down for billions of people.

"I'm optimistic that we could reach that point before the end of this year," Oxford Vaccine Trial

Chief Investigator Andrew Pollard told British lawmakers of presenting trial results this year.

Pollard said working out whether or not the vaccine worked would likely come this year, after

which the data would have to be carefully reviewed by regulators and then a political decision

made on who should get the vaccine.

"Our bit - we are getting closer to but we are not there yet," Pollard, director of the Oxford

Vaccine Group, said.

Asked if he expected the vaccine would start to be deployed before Christmas, he said: "There

is a small chance of that being possible but I just don't know."

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be one of the first from big pharma to be

submitted for regulatory approval, along with Pfizer and BioNTech's candidate.

"If I put on my rose-tinted specs, I would hope that we will see positive interim data from both

Oxford and from Pfizer/BioNTech in early December and if we get that then I think we have

got the possibility of deploying by the year end," Kate Bingham, the chair of the UK Vaccine

Taskforce, told lawmakers.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there was the prospect of a vaccine in the first quarter of

2021.

‘Game changer’

Work began on the Oxford vaccine in January. Called AZD1222, or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, the

viral vector vaccine is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus that causes

infections in chimpanzees.

The chimpanzee cold virus has been genetically changed to include the genetic sequence of the

so-called spike protein which the coronavirus uses to gain entry to human cells. The hope is

that the human body will then attack the novel coronavirus if it sees it again.

If Oxford's vaccine works, it would eventually allow the world to return to some measure of

normality after the tumult of the pandemic.

Asked what success looked like, he said: "I think good is having vaccines that have significant

efficacy - so whether, I mean, that is 50, 60, 70, 80 per cent, whatever the figure is - is an

enormous achievement.

"It means from a health system point of view, there are fewer people with COVID going into

hospital, that people who develop cancer can have their operations of chemotherapy – it’s a

complete game changer and a success if we meet those efficacy end points."

But Pollard, one of the world's top experts on immunology, said the world might not return to

normal immediately.

"...It takes time to roll out vaccines. Not everyone will take them," he said. "We will still have

people getting this virus because it is just too good at transmitting.

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