By Otto Rodriguez
Miami-Dade Health
A coronavirus vaccine developed in partnership by the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, and the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has shown promising results in the third phase of final trials, the step before being submitted for final approval.
According to the medical journal The Lancet, the vaccine showed dual immune action by increasing protective neutralizing antibodies and immune T-cells that target the virus. In the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials, most of the participants received a single dose of vaccine.
In a statement released to the press, AstraZeneca said that a single dose of the vaccine produced a four-fold increase in antibodies to the virus’s spike protein in 95% of participants one month after injection.
The announcement comes after the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 600,000 people worldwide -almost 150,000 of those in the US alone- and triggered economic turmoil all over the planet since starting in China earlier this year.
Moderna, a pharmaceutical company that is testing another leading vaccine published last week some preliminary results based on early tests that showed its vaccine raised levels of antibodies that fight COVID-19.
These two scientific efforts are part of a larger worldwide strategy against coronavirus with many countries and pharmaceuticals competing to obtain an effective vaccine.
China has at least six vaccines currently in trials, one of which is in the last phases, while Russia recently announced that a candidate from the Gamaleya Institute, owned by the government, will enter the final trials in August.
The United Kingdom announced recently that it had secured millions of doses not only of the Oxford vaccine but other variants being researched and produced in France and Germany. In the United States, billions of dollars are being allocated to developing and manufacturing vaccines against COVID-19.
