Oxford Coronavirus Vaccine ‘Safe’ And Showing ‘Promising Results’

A UK vaccine against coronavirus has shown “promising” results, findings of the first phases of the study suggest.

The early-stage trial showed the vaccine is “safe, causes few side effects, and induces strong immune responses,” results published in The Lancet said.

However, scientists warned it is still too soon to know if the results are enough, and larger trials are currently under way.

The vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford, is called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and is delivered via a chimpanzee virus, called the vaccine vector.

It is made from a genetically engineered virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees, which is then engineered to express the coronavirus spike protein to trigger a strong immune response in the human body.

The UK government has already ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine.