Race For Vaccine: Oxford Scientists Announce Their Vaccines Are Ready In September

Illustrated photo (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - A vaccine for COVID-19 is likely to be ready for use in September, said a Professor of Vaccineology Sarah Gilbert. The scientist from the University of Oxford, England is 80 percent sure that the vaccine being developed by his team will be completed on target.

According to Sky News, Gilbert and his team are a group of scientists in the world who are racing against time to find a vaccine for COVID-19. Several scientists from several other countries such as the United States, China, and Israel are indeed competing to make a vaccine.

The process of making a vaccine is time consuming and difficult to determine. The reason is, this virus must go through several stages of testing, such as the initial development process, then testing it on animals, and then it can be tested on humans starting from a small scale to a large scale.

Meanwhile, Gilbert's vaccine will be tested on humans in the next two weeks. They are willing to work seven days a week to speed up the process of working on the vaccine.

"I think there is a great chance that the development will be successful, based on the other things we have done with this type of vaccine," Gilbert was quoted as saying by The Times newspaper.

Gilbert said, the vaccine completion target is not just a guess, but based on the latest data which continues to grow every week. "I think this (estimate) is about 80 percent," said Gilbert.

Virus shield

The good news is that researchers from the University of Southampton reveal that the new coronavirus has a "low shield". This means that vaccines can be more easily developed.

Even so, Gilbert did not want to be too complacent, he said that no one was able to promise when the virus would end. But Gilbert believes that if everything goes perfectly, then the vaccine will be completed as targeted.

The challenge is, the Oxford scientists admit that it is difficult to carry out vaccine trials in the UK, due to low levels of human activity after the lockdown. In order to get faster results, they had to do the trial in a place where the transmission rate was higher.

As is well known, the UK has indeed become one of the countries that has poured out the largest amount of funds for the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. Britain has poured £ 210 million into vaccine development.

Meanwhile the British government itself says it is ready to buy millions of doses, should the experiment prove successful.