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Coronavirus: Oxford vaccine effective in monkeys, heading for mass production in India
- Six animals inoculated with vaccine candidate then exposed to virus did not catch Covid-19 after 28 days
- Up to 60 million doses could be produced by Serum Institute of India this year
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A leading candidate for a Covid-19 vaccine has shown promising results in animal trials, and is expected to see mass production in India within months.
The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines by volume, said on Tuesday that it plans this year to produce up to 60 million doses of a potential vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, which is under clinical trial in Britain.
While the vaccine candidate, called “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19”, is yet to be proven to work against Covid-19, Serum decided to start manufacturing it as it had shown success in animal trials and had progressed to tests on humans, Serum Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla said.
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Six rhesus macaque monkeys were inoculated with the vaccine candidate at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana last month, according to The New York Times.
The subjects were exposed afterwards to large quantities of the novel coronavirus, but all six remained healthy after more than 28 days, the newspaper reported, citing researcher Vincent Munster, who conducted the test.
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