The COVID-19 vaccine from Oxford and Astrazeneca shows 'promising' results in early human trials

• The vaccine was given to 543 volunteers and no serious side effects were found.
• However, 70% of the vaccinated volunteers experienced fatigue and 68% had headaches, higher rates than a control group given a meningitis vaccine.
• There is still much work to be done before we can confirm if our vaccine will help manage the COVID-19 pandemic, but these early results hold promise.

A coronavirus vaccine the University of Oxford is developing with AstraZeneca has shown 'promising' results in early human testing, reports said on Monday (July 20).

AstraZeneca became the latest to release data from its human trials, the clinical results were published in The Lancet. The vaccine was given to 543 volunteers and no serious side effects were found. However, 70% of the vaccinated volunteers experienced fatigue and 68% had headaches, higher rates than a control group given a meningitis vaccine.

"There is still much work to be done before we can confirm if our vaccine will help manage the COVID-19 pandemic, but these early results hold promise," Sara Gilbert, a professor at the University of Oxford, said in a statement Monday.

India's Serum Institute of India has entered a manufacturing partnership with AstraZeneca to produce and supply 1 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Oxford University. This is one of the seven Indian pharma companies working on a vaccine against the novel coronavirus. Bharat Biotech, Zydus Cadila, Panacea Biotec, Indian Immunologicals, Mynvax and Biological E are the other Indian companies in the pursuit of a vaccine to end the pandemic.

Another vaccine from the American biotech firm Moderna is likely to start human trials in a week from now. The progress in vaccine may boost both public and market sentiment in the near term but it will be much longer it is available to the public.

Here's why it takes so long to develop a vaccine:

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