COVID- 19 Vaccine: Human Trial Starts Today

University of Oxford will start human trial of its coronavirus vaccine from April 23 according to UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock. The official said that the government had thrown everything at developing a vaccine.

Coronavirus vaccine

Presently, the universities of Oxford and Imperial College are working on developing a potential coronavirus vaccine in UK. Matt Hancock said that he could announce that the vaccine from the Oxford project would be trialed on people from April 23. He further said that it would take years to achieve this stage in normal times but he was very proud of the work taken that far. Hancock was speaking in a press conference that was later broadcasted on Twitter.

Coronavirus vaccine fund

The UK government had allocated GBP 44.5 million (Rs. 420 crore) to both the universities working on coronavirus vaccine. The allocated fund would be used for clinical trails that ad been making rapid progress, added the secretary. He further said that the government was ready to fund manufacturing of the vaccine.

In case, either of the vaccine works safely, the government will pump finance in manufacturing to boost production and made the vaccines available for UK citizens as humanely as possible.

UK coronavirus cases

According to data shared by the UK Department of Health and Social Care, the country had 129,044 confirm cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic. The number of deaths due to coronavirus were 17,337 till Tuesday.

Source: https://bit.ly/3cKcXIe

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Trial Of Coronavirus Vaccine Begins In US

US health officials made an announcement about start of the first human trial of a candidate vaccine against the new coronavirus in Seattle. This test is a ray of hope in the global fight against the disease.

But the vaccine has to pass more trials in phases before it is termed safe and it could take from 12 to 18 months before it is made available for public.

COVID-19 vaccine

US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in collaboration with Cambridge, Massachusetts based biotechnology company Modern has been developing a vaccine called mRNA-1273 to defeat COVID-19.

The trial involves 45 healthy adult volunteers between the age group of 18 to 55 years. They will be kept under observation for a period of 6 weeks and the trail on the first volunteer would start on Wednesday. Funding for the trial was provided by the Oslo-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

COVID-19 has already infected more than 175,000 people and claimed over 7,000 lives so far. But there is no approved vaccine for this infection. Head of infectious diseases at the NIH said that finding a safe and effective vaccine to prevent infection was an urgent public health priority.

The Moderna vaccine will use a messenger RNA that contains the genetic information of the spike. The messenger will grow the spike inside the human body and elicit response without actually infecting a person with the full-blown virus. US-based Gilead Sciences has already developed an antiviral treatment called remdesivir and it is in the final stages of developing the vaccine.

Source: https://bit.ly/3b1BffO

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Finally, US Scientists Find Breakthrough In Coronavirus Treatment

US scientists have created the first 3D atomic scale map of the part of the novel coronavirus. And this breakthrough came after the death count from the virus jumper past 2,000, while the number of infected persons in China is said to be 74,185.

Breakthrough in coronavirus

The COVID-19 virus attaches to and infects human cells. But a team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) developed a stabilized sample of a key part called the spike protein of the virus after studying its genetic code made public by the Chinese researchers.

Spike protein

UT Austin scientist Jason McLellan, who led the research, said that it was the antigen that can activate the response system in the human body. It would make antibodies against this virus. In the event of virus attack or infection. He added that the breakthrough was the result many years of studies on coronavirus family including SARS and MERS. He gave the credit of keeping the spike protein stable to the past research.

Coronavirus vaccine

The team will the share the map of the molecular structure of coronavirus to collaborators around the world so that they can work on the map and get a bigger response for this virus. This model is expected to help scientists in developing new proteins to bind to different parts of the spike and disable it to provide an effective treatment option to those infected with coronavirus.

Source: https://bit.ly/2V6QQG9

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