London: The first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vaccine has begun in Oxford.
Two volunteers were injected, the first of more than 800 people recruited for the study, the BBC reported.
Half will receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and half a control vaccine which protects against meningitis but not coronavirus.
The design of the trial means volunteers will not know which vaccine they are getting, though doctors will. Scientists from Oxford University began trialling Thursday a COVID-19 vaccine on humans for the first time in the UK.
Professor Andrew Pollard, the investigator leading the trial, said that it would last at least a year but that investigators could know within a few months if the vaccine works.
Pollard said the other challenge would be upscaling production.
"It's certainly possible if nothing goes wrong in that upscaling process, that there could be millions of doses available in the autumn," he said. "But to get to the scale that we need to control this pandemic is going to take much longer than that."
