(Photo : Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay )

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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Scientists in the UK are now asking for 500 healthy individuals between the age of 18 and 55 to test a potential vaccine for COVID-19, dubbed ChAdOx1 nCoV-19.

Is This Real or Just Another Hoax?

As medical experts and scientists all over the world race to fight and find the cure for the deadly coronavirus pandemic, this may be one of the solutions for it since the testing was fast-tracked to combat COVID-19, the sickness brought by the coronavirus.

The name of this vaccine is called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, and scientists believe that it will be many weeks before it will be ready for mass production.

In the meantime, however, they are calling for over 500 people to help them test the effectiveness of the vaccine to make sure that it is indeed legit and will bring a stop to this global pandemic.

The vaccine has already undergone clinical and preliminary animal tests; hence now they are moving to the next logical step, which is us humans itself.

What Happens to the People Tested for the Study?

The people who will participate in the study will be split into two groups. One group will be injected with the real "vaccine," while the other group will be injected with nothing really, maybe just sterile water. The patients will not know which one they received.

Recruitment for the study is already underway; the problem would be that the patients would not be able to receive the vaccination until several weeks.

Scientists are using this time to refine and enhance the vaccine, and it is currently being developed at the Public Health England or PHE laboratory at Porton Down, located near Salisbury.

The vaccine itself is being manufactured inside the university campus. The vaccine has been in development since January, in which the World Health Organization reported the first-ever case of the coronavirus.

Professor Adrian Hill, who is the Director of Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, said: "The Oxford team had exceptional experience of a rapid vaccine response, such as to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014.

'This is an even greater challenge. Vaccines are being designed from scratch and progressed at an unprecedented rate.

'The upcoming trial will be critical for assessing the feasibility of vaccination against COVID-19 and could lead to early deployment.'

Scientists do Still Have a Warning for You

This trial for the vaccination has the full support of scientific and ethical approvals. However, some scientists do acknowledge there might still be a risk because of the escalated fast-tracking of the vaccine given the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, making its way towards our globe.

This will not deter the benefits of creating an effective vaccine; however, since the coronavirus has infected as of the time of writing, it affected more than half a million people and took away the lives of almost 30,000 individuals worldwide.