Britain expects to roll out Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine before Christmas
Britain expects to start rolling out the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine just before Christmas if it is declared safe and effective, health minister Matt Hancock said on Monday.
“We’re working very closely with the company,” he told BBC TV. “We’ll be ready to roll it out as soon as it comes, we’ll be ready from the first of December..., but more likely is that we may be able to start rolling it out before Christmas.”
Asked how many vaccines Britain would need, he said it depended on how effective they were at preventing transmission.
J&J starts two-dose trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate
Johnson & Johnson launched a new large-scale late-stage trial on Monday to test a two-dose regimen of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine and evaluate potential incremental benefits for the duration of protection with a second dose.
The U.S. drugmaker plans to enrol up to 30,000 participants for the study and run it in parallel with a one-dose trial with as many as 60,000 volunteers that began in September.
The UK arm of the study is aiming to recruit 6,000 participants and the rest will join from other countries with a high incidence of COVID-19 cases such as the United States, Belgium, Colombia, France, Germany, the Philippines, South Africa and Spain, it said.
They will be given a first dose of either a placebo or the experimental shot, currently called Ad26COV2, followed by a second dose or placebo 57 days later, said Saul Faust, a professor of paediatric immunology and infectious diseases who is co-leading the trial at University Hospital Southampton.