After one of the leading experimental COVID-19 vaccines produced an immune response in both children and adults, hopes rose as the public is a step away from coming out of the economic and health damage caused by the SARS-CoV-2.
British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc, a company that helped manufacture and co-developed the vaccine, shared on Monday that aside from its immune response in adults and children, the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford also triggered lower adverse reactions for elderlies.
According to Yahoo! News, the possible, reliable vaccine is seen as a game-changer in the fight against the COVID-19 as it already has caused a death toll of not less than 1.15 million people. It has also shut down the global economy and put the lives of billions of people worldwide on pause and in danger.
A spokesman from the British drugmaker company also mentioned that it is encouraging to see that the immunogenicity responses were similar for adults and the young ones, while the reactogenicity was lower in older adults.
The spokesman, who called the COVID-19 vaccine by its technical name AZD1222, also shared that the results further built a body of evidence for immunogenicity and safety.
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As the world continues to find a way to come out of the coronavirus pandemic, the vaccine, which was co-developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca, is one of the first vaccines developed by huge pharmaceutical companies that were able to secure regulatory approval, together with BioNTech and Pfizer's candidate.
The news regarding the older people getting an immune response from the said vaccine made the public very positive as the immune system weakens for older people and aging as they are the most at risk of dying because of the virus, Reuters reported.
If the COVID-19 vaccine perfectly works, it will allow the world to return to normal after the major damage and change caused by the pandemic, which also forced the people into the new normal.
Matt Hancock, the British Health Secretary, shared that a COVID-19 vaccine is not yet ready, but they are already preparing for its possible logistics, and the earliest time for its rollout will be mostly in the first half of 2021.
When asked if some people can receive a vaccine this year, Hancock stated that he does not rule that out, but he also mentioned that it is not his central expectation.
The British Health Secretary also added that the program is progressing well, but they are not yet in the distribution stage.
The work for the COVID-19 vaccine started in Oxford in January, wherein they call it ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 or AZD1222. Its viral vector vaccine is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus that caused infections in chimpanzees.
According to CNBC, the virus, which was called a chimpanzee cold virus, has been genetically changed for the inclusion of the genetic sequence of the so-called spike protein, which the coronavirus used in entering the human cell.
Developers are hoping that once the human body sees the novel coronavirus, it will attack it right away.
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