Professor Sarah Gilbert said it would not be safe for them to do a so-called 'challenge trial' of Oxford University's Covid-19 vaccine candidateAn Oxford academic today dismissed the idea of deliberately infecting volunteers with Covid-19 to test the university's experimental vaccine because no treatment currently exists to keep patients safe. Heidi Chow from Global Justice Now said: 'This UK-first approach exposes the government’s rhetoric on equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines as mere lip-service. Roz Scourse, from Medecins Sans Frontieres, added: 'This deal is the UK’s latest attempt to get first access to COVID-19 vaccines. It has led Oxford to take their vaccine trial to South Africa and Brazil, two countries where cases of Covid-19 are accelerating. The Covid-19 vaccine, named AZD1222, had been given to 543 people out of a group of 1,077.

Source: Daily Mail July 21, 2020 10:19 UTC