Coronavirus in Albion
Coronavirus in AlbioniStock

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock today announced that an experimental vaccine for coronavirus disease will be passed to human trials as early as Thursday after clinical trials have shown "promising results".

The vaccine, a development of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, will be coming into serial production in coming days, with the goal of reaching a large number of vaccines by September, in hopes that the trials will see positive results and the vaccine can be used.

Hancock announced the British government had transferred £20 million to the development team, with the aim of generating a large amount of vaccines. "Vaccine development is an uncertain science, but the two development teams working on finding a vaccine have shown promising progress. At the same time, we are increasing vaccine production capacity to bring an effective vaccine to the public in the fastest possible time," Hancock said.

The vaccine developed in Oxford, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, was developed from "a harmless virus of genetically engineered chimpanzees to mimic certain features of the coronavirus". The development team claims to have revealed over eighty percent efficiency.

Meanwhile, the death toll from coronavirus in Britain rose again today after three days of relative decline. 828 people died from coronavirus in the past day in hospitals across the UK, raising the total death toll in the Kingdom to 17,337. The overall infection rate in the country is 129,000.