Thursday, April 23, 2020 - 09:54

Teams at Imperial and Oxford appeal to Londoners to join Covid-19 fight

THE global search for a coronavirus vaccine has a “very high chance of success”, the London scientist leading one of two UK bids said today.

Professor Robin Shattock, of Imperial College London, said the scientific community was “very confident” that a jab able to prevent people contracting the virus could be developed.

His assessment is the most upbeat yet and comes after fears that a vaccine — the key to ending the death toll from Covid-19 — could take 12 to 18 months to discover and mass produce.

The Imperial team today appealed for healthy volunteers to enrol in its trials that will begin in June. Londoners are also being sought — with the offer of up to £625 in compensation — to enrol from today in a separate Oxford University trial, which is recruiting more than 1,100 people via Hammersmith Hospital.

Professor Shattock told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think we are very confident that some vaccines will come through and work. There are so many groups [worldwide] working on different approaches and this virus is not as difficult a target as some of the things we have seen before.

“I think scientifically there is a very high chance of success of getting a vaccine, and we hope one of these might be one of the two approaches developed in the UK.