The New York Times revealed that the Oxford team’s vaccine had made a promising start with immunising rhesus macaque monkeys.
VACCINE COULD BE MADE AVAILABLE BY SEPTEMBER
Oxford’s Jenner Institute is hoping that first few million doses of the vaccine could be made available by September. “Tests have been scheduled for the coronavirus vaccine, involving over 6,000 people by May-end,” the report said. According to NYT, six rhesus macaque monkeys were inoculated with the Oxford vaccine in March at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana.
“The monkeys were then exposed to heavy quantities of the coronavirus. Such exposure had consistently sickened other monkeys in the lab. But more than 28 days later, all six were healthy. The rhesus macaque is pretty much the closest thing we have to humans,” Vincent Munster, the researcher who conducted the test, said.
“Scientists at the university’s Jenner Institute had a head-start on a vaccine, having proved in previous trials that similar inoculations—including one last year against an earlier coronavirus—were harmless to humans,” NYT’s article added.