Clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine will get underway in the UK this week.

The trials will see a vaccine developed at the University of Oxford tested on coronavirus patients.

The Oxford team has already begun producing it and has said it wants about a million doses ready to go in September.

The researchers believed the trials have around an 80% chance of success.

Vaccine

Meanwhile the UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced that the Oxford trial and another at Imperial College London would be getting at least a further £20m (€22.6m) in public money.

He said vaccine development is an “uncertain science” but insisted the two teams were making “rapid progress” and would be backed “to the hilt.”

“At the same time, we'll invest in manufacturing capability so if either of these vaccines safely works then we can make it available for the British people as soon as humanely possible,” he said.

He cautioned that “nothing about this process is certain.”

Oxford

The Oxford vaccine, called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is made from a harmless chimpanzee virus that has been genetically engineered to carry part of the coronavirus.

The technique has already been shown to generate strong immune responses in other diseases.

Clinical trial

Up to 500 people will be part of the “randomised control trial” at Oxford by mid-May.

The trial will involve healthy volunteers, half of whom will be given a different vaccine.

Human trials on a vaccine are already underway in the US and China.

The National Public Health Emergency Team this evening announced a further 44 deaths taking the death toll in the Republic to 730.

Meanwhile, 338 new cases have been, taking the national total to 16,040.

Main image is a posed picture of a virologist with a vaccination syringe, 19-04-2020. Image: Christoph Hardt/Geisler-Fotopres/DPA/PA Images