Countering COVID: Oxford Vaccine At Most Advanced Stage & Are Frontrunners: WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified the vaccine developed by Oxford University-AstraZeneca and Moderna Inc as frontrunners in the race against the coronavirus pandemic.

There are at least 13 experimental vaccines in clinical trials stage currently, among the 140 being developed all over the world to combat the deadly COVID-19.

“Certainly in terms of how advanced they are, the stage at which they are, I think they are probably the leading candidate,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan was quoted as saying by Reuters.

“We do know that Moderna’s vaccine is also going to go into phase III clinical trials, probably from the middle of July, and so that vaccine candidate is not far behind. AstraZeneca certainly has a more global scope at the moment in terms of where they are doing and planning their vaccine trials,” Swaminathan said.

AstraZeneca has already begun phase III human trials of its AZD1222 (formerly known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) vaccine. It has so far signed 10 supply-and-manufacturing deal.

Brazil announced on Saturday it had signed a $127 million agreement to start producing locally the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

The AstraZeneca CEO had told a radio station earlier that their vaccine is likely to provide protection against COVID-19 for one year.