AstraZeneca strikes deal to mass produce Oxford Uni coronavirus vaccine for no profit – to help millions across world
A CORONAVIRUS vaccine that could save millions of lives across the world may be ready in just months, thanks to a landmark deal.
British pharma firm AstraZeneca will make and distribute the University of Oxford's potential COVID-19 vaccine on a "virtually free basis", if the trials in Oxford are deemed a success.
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The Cambridge-based company did not give details on when it will start producing the vaccine for Covid-19, which has so far infected more than 3 million people and killed more than 215,000.
While there are more than 70 vaccines in development for the coronavirus, industry experts expect development to take at least 12-18 months.
Professor Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University today said that the new vaccination would be "distributed at cost" and would "basically be free" during the pandemic.
The initial roll out will focus on the most vulnerable in society.
Despite the excitement around the vaccination, he said it was important for people to understand that it is still a development programme.
He said the team still needed to demonstrate that it will work on a human population.
"The team in Oxford led by Andy Pollard in the clinic have done a great job, they have vaccinated several hundred people now and we hope to get some signal as to whether it’s working or not by the end of June," Sir John said.
"The challenge is that once we get an approval by the regulators, we don’t want to have to go back to the beginning and to have to work out how to manufacture it at scale".
Scaling up manufacturing
Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Sir John said UK manufacturing capability is "not where it needs to be", and added that AstraZeneca would be able to "improve that considerably".
He added: "It’s really preparing facilities to scale up the vaccine so we will need to make 30 or 40 million doses in the first instance to try and get enough available that if it gets approved we can vaccinate people immediately.
"Things for example like the vials you put the vaccine in the so called fill and finish, there are only 200 million vials left in the world now because they have been sucked up by various people who can anticipate a vaccine coming along, so there is lots of challenges getting this to work and we are delighted to have such a big and powerful partner working with us".
Sir John said the first part of the plan was to make sure that there is enough onshore vaccinations for vulnerable people.
"That’s 30 million doses of the vaccine, that should cover off all of the vulnerable patients but simultaneously we are going to begin to talk and indeed Oxford has already begun to talk to some partners overseas so that they to can prepare."
Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, said in a statement: "Our hope is that, by joining forces, we can accelerate the globalisation of a vaccine to combat the virus and protect people from the deadliest pandemic in a generation."
Also speaking on the Today programme he admitted it was a financial risk to the company but said that "now was the time to take these risks" and that solutions were needed to manage the pandemic.
He said the company would be relying on manufacturing organisations and would be ramping up its own manufacturing capacity over the next few months so it would be able to distribute the vaccine "if it works".
Mr Soriot added that there are already collaborations in place between the Oxford unit and partners around the world.
"My hope is that this won't be the only vaccine available, my hope is that several will be available to supply the various needs of companies around the world".
The science is uncertain, and no vaccine may work, but this deal gives the UK the best chance we can of a breakthrough that could defeat this awful virus.
Matt Hancock
He confirmed that the vaccine would be produced at cost for the period of the pandemic.
He said the cost of the vaccine is not going to be very high and will be available for everyone.
Results by summer
The Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group have been working on a vaccine, called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, with work to begin on millions of doses before trials show whether it is effective.
The team last week dosed the first volunteers in a trial of the vaccine, with possible early readouts in May.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock described the move by AstraZenca as "hugely welcome news".
He tweeted: "The Oxford vaccine is one of the most advanced in the world.
"Bringing together the best British science and the best of British business will give us the best possible shot at a vaccine.
"The science is uncertain, and no vaccine may work, but this deal gives the UK the best chance we can of a breakthrough that could defeat this awful virus.
"I'm sending best wishes for good fortune to all involved - for the sake of the nation and indeed the whole world."
While some experts claim the vaccine will be ready in 12-18 months, others have said that is an "optimistic figure".
James Cutrell, director of the infectious disease fellowship program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said that this figure would is only based on the assumption that all trials will go to plan.
How does a vaccine get approved?
In order for a vaccination to be made available to the general public, it has to go through a long process. Scientists working on a vaccine for the coronavirus are trying to speed this process up.
Here are the main stages:
- The exploratory stage - is the research phase, used to find out what may help treat or prevent a disease
- Pre clinical stage - research in a lab and on animals
- Clinical development- this is a three stage process. In stage one small groups receive the vaccine, stage two, it is given to people with characteristics similar to who the vaccine is intended for and step three is when the vaccine is rolled out to thousands of people to test
- Regulatory review and approval - where the correct bodies are contacted and liased with the bring it to market
- Manufacturing - the production of the drug
- Quality control - does the vaccine do what it set out to
Speaking to the Huffington Post he said: “I’d say the 12 to 18 months that’s been bandied about by some experts is realistic, but it’s optimistic.
“It is based on the assumption that each phase of trials goes according to plan, with an optimistic time frame at each of those stages.”
Second reason for hope
As the new vaccine continues through the development stage a drug used to treat Ebola patients has shown "very promising" early results in a trial of people admitted to hospital with coronavirus, scientists said.
Patients given remdesivir had a recovery time that was almost a third faster than those given a placebo, the first results from an international clinical trial showed.
Abdel Babiker, professor of epidemiology and medical statistics at UCL, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "These are very encouraging results from the first large-scale randomised trial to report on any treatment of Covid-19."
A second beacon of hope: could Ebola drug help Covid-19 patients recover faster?
A drug used to treat Ebola patients has shown "very promising" early results in a trial of people admitted to hospital with coronavirus, scientists said.
Patients given remdesivir had a recovery time that was almost a third faster than those given a placebo, the first results from an international clinical trial showed.
Abdel Babiker, professor of epidemiology and medical statistics at UCL, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "These are very encouraging results from the first large-scale randomised trial to report on any treatment of Covid-19."
He said the group of adults admitted to hospital with advanced coronavirus who received remdesivir recovered "much faster" than the group that received a placebo.
Preliminary results also suggested a survival benefit, with a lower mortality rate of 8 per cent for the group receiving the drug, compared with 11.6 per cent for the placebo group, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD) said.
More than 1,000 patients have been recruited across the world, including 46 from the UK, for the Adaptive Covid-19 Treatment Trial, which began at the start of April. Scientists involved in the study defined recovery as a patient being well enough to come off oxygen, being discharged from hospital or even returning to normal activity levels.
During the trial, which involved more than 70 hospitals across the globe, patients were given the antiviral drug every day for 10 days while they remained in hospital. Professor Mahesh Parmar, director of the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, who oversaw the EU portion of the trial, said scientists will continue to gather further data while the early results are reviewed by regulators.
Prof Parmar said: "These results are very promising indeed. They show that this drug can clearly improve time to recovery.
"Before this drug can be made more widely available, a number of things need to happen: the data and results need to be reviewed by the regulators to assess whether the drug can be licensed and then they need assessment by the relevant health authorities in various countries.
"While this is happening, we will obtain more and longer term data from this trial, and other ones, on whether the drug also prevents deaths from Covid-19."
He said the group of adults admitted to hospital with advanced coronavirus who received remdesivir recovered "much faster" than the group that received a placebo.
Preliminary results also suggested a survival benefit, with a lower mortality rate of 8 per cent for the group receiving the drug, compared with 11.6 per cent for the placebo group, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD) said.
More than 1,000 patients have been recruited across the world, including 46 from the UK, for the Adaptive Covid-19 Treatment Trial, which began at the start of April.
Scientists involved in the study defined recovery as a patient being well enough to come off oxygen, being discharged from hospital or even returning to normal activity levels.
During the trial, which involved more than 70 hospitals across the globe, patients were given the antiviral drug every day for 10 days while they remained in hospital.
Professor Mahesh Parmar, director of the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, who oversaw the EU portion of the trial, said scientists will continue to gather further data while the early results are reviewed by regulators.
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Prof Parmar said: "These results are very promising indeed. They show that this drug can clearly improve time to recovery.
"Before this drug can be made more widely available, a number of things need to happen: the data and results need to be reviewed by the regulators to assess whether the drug can be licensed and then they need assessment by the relevant health authorities in various countries.
"While this is happening, we will obtain more and longer term data from this trial, and other ones, on whether the drug also prevents deaths from Covid-19."
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