Of the hundreds of potential COVID-19 vaccines in development, six are in the final stages of testing, known as phase 3 clinical trials. One of these – ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 – is the vaccine we’re developing at the University of Oxford.
To be approved, vaccines need to go through multiple rounds of testing to show that they’re safe and effective. A combined phase 1 and phase 2 trial of the Oxford vaccine has demonstrated that it is safe – with only short-term side-effects and no serious unexpected events reported – and that it elicits an immune response.
The purpose of a phase 3 trial is to assess whether this vaccine-induced immune response is strong enough to actually protect people from COVID-19. Proving this would pave the way for the vaccine to become publicly available.
Read the full article on The Conversation website, written by Rebecca Ashfield and Pedro Folegatti (The Jenner Institute)
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