Viruses: AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine induces “encouraging immune response”

London | British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced on Monday that its currently being developed COVID-19 vaccine is eliciting an encouraging immune response from young adults and the elderly.

“It is encouraging to see similar immune responses between the elderly and young adults,” said a spokesperson for AstraZeneca who is working on the vaccine with the University of Oxford.

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“The results are fueling evidence for the safety and immune response” of the vaccine, according to the group.

The University of Oxford specifies that these data come from the first so-called phase 2 clinical trials.

The vaccine is currently at the stage of larger clinical trials called phase 3, the stage before its authorization by the authorities.

The clinical trial has also resumed in the United States, the only country where it was still suspended following the onset of a disease in a participant more than six weeks ago, AstraZeneca announced Friday.

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The results of the trial are expected this year for this vaccine project, which is one of the most advanced in the world.

It is one of ten to be tested in tens of thousands of volunteers in a phase 3 trial, with projects from the United States, China and Russia.

The pharmaceutical group has pre-sold hundreds of millions of doses on several continents and signed partnerships with other producers so that the doses are produced locally.

The expected demand amounts to billions of doses.

In the United Kingdom, Health Minister Matt Hancock estimated Monday on BBC 4 radio that “the bulk of the deployment” of a vaccine against the coronavirus could take place before next summer.

He did not rule out that some people could even receive it before Christmas.