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Oxford Vaccine phase three trial suggests it's highly effective with up to 90% protection

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Yew

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Apparently the best-case scenario is mid-october, although it's from an unnamed source in the Express, so who knows how reliable it is.


Revealing news of the work on a vaccine, the source said: “We are looking at a best-case scenario of six weeks to develop and test a vaccine – and that would be a game changer.

“Even if it takes longer, we feel Oxford and Imperial are close. Obviously, it then needs to be rolled out and millions of doses given to the public but we have built up the manufacturing capability.”
 
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Domh245

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The reality? My guess is March of next year before this gets even close to being available for those of us that want it.

I think it's more likely that March 21 is when it starts to get distributed to healthcare workers, for the general public (particularly those not in a vulnerable category) it'll probably be around this time next year
 

nlogax

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I think it's more likely that March 21 is when it starts to get distributed to healthcare workers, for the general public (particularly those not in a vulnerable category) it'll probably be around this time next year

Yes, you're probably right. Either way those in healthcare and working in high risk settings such as care homes should be getting priority.

Genuinely, folks need stop posting Daily Express links around here. They're as close to actual journalism as our Speculation sub forum is to what's confirmed for Network Rail CP6.
 

yorkie

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More good news about this vaccine has been published today:

More than 20,000 volunteers were involved, half in the UK, the rest in Brazil.
There were 30 cases of Covid in people who had two doses of the vaccine and 101 cases in people who received a dummy injection.
The researchers said it works out at 70% protection.
When volunteers were given two "high" doses the protection was 62%, but this rose to 90% when people were given a "low" dose followed by a high one. It's not clear why there is a difference.
"We're really pleased with these results," Prof Andrew Pollard, the trial's lead investigator, told the BBC.
He said the 90% effectiveness data was "intriguing" and would mean "we would have a lot more doses to distribute."
There were also lower levels of asymptomatic infection in the low-followed-by-high-dose group which "means we might be able to halt the virus in its tracks," Prof Pollard said.

It's important to remember that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine can be mass produced much more easily and at much lower cost, than many other vaccines. It can also be stored at normal fridge temperature.
 
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Darandio

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It's important to remember that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine can be mass produced much more easily and at much lower cost, than many other vaccines. It can also be stored at normal room temperature.

The article suggests storage at fridge temperature. Regardless, coupled with the lower cost this would be great news for poorer countries in terms of shipping worldwide because the other two leading vaccines need to be frozen, one at a very low temperature.
 

yorksrob

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It is good news. Particularly given that there seems to be a good chance that it's 90% effective with the correct double dose.
 

Yew

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Indeed, suddenly your distribution network becomes not much more complicated than a Tescos Delivery Van and some tents.

Regarding 70%, if that is infection prevention, that would be enough to do it, and I'd be interested to see about symptom mitigation 70% reduction in infections, and say 90% symptom reduction would be more than fine, I'd be happy with one that did either.
 

yorkie

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The article suggests storage at fridge temperature. Regardless, coupled with the lower cost this would be great news for poorer countries in terms of shipping worldwide because the other two leading vaccines need to be frozen, one at a very low temperature.
Sorry yes I knew it was fridge temperature (indeed I was telling a forum member about it on a walk yesterday!) but for some reason my hands typed "room". But the point is it's easy to store and transport it :)
 

Yew

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This article from Sky News


Suggests that there may actually be 90% protection, and that the 70% number refers to the reduction in transmission?

I'm still not sure that I understand what's being said at the moment, so I'll try and update once I've found out more.
 

Darandio

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The BBC article has also removed the 70% tag from the headline and now just says 'highly effective'. It still shows overall 70% protection in the body of the article though, for such a major announcement it would be nice if the major news outlets in this country could align.
 

Domh245

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From what I've read - 70% was the overall effectiveness in protection measured across both 'styles' of delivery. The "2 full doses" method was 62% efficient and the "half then full dose" method was 90% efficient combining to give the 70% average. There is no assessment on transmission that I'm aware of
 

brad465

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Reading that in today's press conference Johnson will be joined by Prof Andrew Pollard from the Oxford vaccine trials, and someone who I'd thought had gone into hiding after their scaremongering failures, Chris Whitty.
 

Bantamzen

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Reading that in today's press conference Johnson will be joined by Prof Andrew Pollard from the Oxford vaccine trials, and someone who I'd thought had gone into hiding after their scaremongering failures, Chris Whitty.
So there's potentially some good news re a vaccine so Whitty wants in.... ;)
 

Bald Rick

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To put some numbers on it, the price of the Oxford vaccine is £2.23 per dose, whereas the Pfizer vaccine is nearly £15 per dose. U.K. Governement may get the Oxford dose slightly cheaper as it helped fund the research. The Oxford dose logistics will also be cheaper.

(Source: MD column in latest Private Eye).
 

Domh245

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To put some numbers on it, the price of the Oxford vaccine is £2.23 per dose, whereas the Pfizer vaccine is nearly £15 per dose. U.K. Governement may get the Oxford dose slightly cheaper as it helped fund the research. The Oxford dose logistics will also be cheaper.

(Source: MD column in latest Private Eye).

The oxford vaccine is the big game changer for the less advanced nations of the world. It's even pretty game changing here too as it's suddenly a lot more palatable to vaccinate the entire population at £2.23 a dose than £15 - even with the potential lower efficacy (which plays even more into the hands of doing the 1.5 dose regime that gave 90% efficacy)
 

Yew

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To put some numbers on it, the price of the Oxford vaccine is £2.23 per dose, whereas the Pfizer vaccine is nearly £15 per dose. U.K. Governement may get the Oxford dose slightly cheaper as it helped fund the research. The Oxford dose logistics will also be cheaper.

(Source: MD column in latest Private Eye).
Very much cheaper on the logistics front; Now a walk-in chiller-trailer and a marquee is a potential vaccination centre. Whereas for Pfizers -80, you'd most likely need cryogenic storage, as even Dry Ice wouldn't be cold enough.
 

A Challenge

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Very much cheaper on the logistics front; Now a walk-in chiller-trailer and a marquee is a potential vaccination centre. Whereas for Pfizers -80, you'd most likely need cryogenic storage, as even Dry Ice wouldn't be cold enough.
I heard somewhere (can't remember where, but I think it was BBC) that the Pfizer vaccine could be out of cold storage for the last 5 days before use and still not lose its effectiveness. This was presented as that it could be transported and kept at the GP surgery for a few days at standard refrigerated temperatures, reducing the storage cost massively.
 

Yew

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I heard somewhere (can't remember where, but I think it was BBC) that the Pfizer vaccine could be out of cold storage for the last 5 days before use and still not lose its effectiveness. This was presented as that it could be transported and kept at the GP surgery for a few days at standard refrigerated temperatures, reducing the storage cost massively.
That would certainly be better, however still would pose challenges.
 

Yew

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Since we have a few vaccines now, I've created a thread to discuss their deployment and approval.


 

hwl

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From what I've read - 70% was the overall effectiveness in protection measured across both 'styles' of delivery. The "2 full doses" method was 62% efficient and the "half then full dose" method was 90% efficient combining to give the 70% average. There is no assessment on transmission that I'm aware of
In the trial’s UK arm, some participants routinely swabbed themselves for SARS-CoV-2 testing even if they weren’t showing symptoms. Pfizer and Moderna’s trials tested only people who showed symptoms. Hence the Oxford trial will have a higher number of cases as it captures some asymptomatic ones hence the measured effectiveness will be lower. The vaccine reduced these asymptomatic cases hence why they believe it will cut transmission. As Pfizer and Moderna didn't do that testing they have no data...
 

Spamcan81

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In the trial’s UK arm, some participants routinely swabbed themselves for SARS-CoV-2 testing even if they weren’t showing symptoms. Pfizer and Moderna’s trials tested only people who showed symptoms. Hence the Oxford trial will have a higher number of cases as it captures some asymptomatic ones hence the measured effectiveness will be lower. The vaccine reduced these asymptomatic cases hence why they believe it will cut transmission. As Pfizer and Moderna didn't do that testing they have no data...

Importantly it has been reported that of those vaccinated in the trial, none who contracted Covid-19 developed serious symptoms and none were hospitalised.
 

The Ham

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The BBC have an article on how the vaccine is being developed so fast, but isn't cutting corners:


Effectively a lot of the for vaccines taking a decade to get developed is down to the time between each stage of the study which comes down time needed to get more funding and then time taken to get people to be in the studies.

As both of these have been much more available than normal they can carry out the studies back to back.

Also the other thing that's helping is that the approving authorities are being submitted the data as the studies progress rather than once the vaccine has been shown to work.

However it also helped that they were developing for an unknown virus and so had a blank vaccine which had already shown some promise before being used for Covid-19.

It's also worth noting that again it's targeting the spikes of the virus rather than the virus itself.

However even at 70% that's quite a lot higher than was the hope when a vaccine was being proposed (flu vaccine is about 50%, mostly due to it being new each year and having to guess the strains of flu). Vaccines with 90% or more tend not to be first generation vaccines, so there's a lot of hopes that if we havea similar pandemic in the future we'd be able to react fairly quickly.
 

DustyBin

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Looking at the average age and general health of those who die from (or is it with, nobody knows!) Covid-19, what will vaccinating them achieve? Have the vaccines even been tested on the most vulnerable (and I don’t mean healthy 60 year olds who aren’t actually vulnerable)? It was something my GF said this morning that got me thinking about this, but should we expect to see a huge reduction in excess deaths next year?
 

Yew

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Yes, phase 2 trials included examining the antibody responses across a large age range, and found that they were present in older people also.
 
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