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 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 <AZN.L> vaccine is expected to be one of the
first from big pharma to be submitted for regulatory approval, along
with Pfizer <PFE.N> and BioNTech's <22UAy.F> candidate.
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.
Pollard said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had set the bar
for a vaccine being at least 50% effective - a level that would have
a transformative impact on the pandemic.
"But to be able scientifically able to test 50% is a lot harder -
you need a lot more cases to occur in the trials," he said. "So I
think we are all hoping the vaccine will be more effective than that
which means we will have an answer sooner."
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"GAME CHANGER"
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 percent,
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 - its 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.
"But unfortunately it doesn't mean we can all go back to normal immediately
because 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."
(Reporting by Alistair Smout and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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