Takudzwa Changadeya

A potential coronavirus vaccine that is being developed at the UK’s University of Oxford is now due to start-up testing on human volunteers on Thursday, Britain has revealed.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the UK is working tirelessly to produce the COVID-19 vaccine with the aim to ensure it’s availability to the public once they succeed.

“Vaccine development is a process of trial and error, and trial again,” he said,

He also added that the UK government was “throwing everything” they have at vaccine projects to have the first COVID-19 vaccine in the world and protect people from the deadly pandemic.

Scientists in the UK are striving to have experimental doses by September 2020.

According to The World Health Organization (WHO) development of a safe vaccine will take at least 12 to 18 months, but contrary, scientists at Oxford are hoping to have it before the end of 2020.

Hancock said the UK government vowed to give the University of Oxford an amount of 20 million pounds ($24.5 million; €22.5 million) to support the project.

He also added that there is another project at Imperial College London which will receive 22.5 million pounds to work on the vaccine.

In Switzerland, the University of Bern has said its COVID-19 vaccine could be ready to roll out and approved for use before the end of the year if it meets all safety requirements.

A Bern Immunologist Martin Bachmann, told journalists German press agency DPA that the international team had already conducted successful procedure tests on mice.

“It is not totally far-fetched,” Swissmedic spokesman Lukas Jaggi said. “Given the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic, we are talking about weeks, not months of approval procedures.”

Meanwhile, the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Roche the company is developing an antibody test to allow people to know if they have ever had the virus next month.