UK scientists immunize hundreds with Covid-19 vaccine

London: Scientists at Imperial College London said that they are immunizing hundreds of people with an experimental coronavirus vaccine in an early trial.

Dr Robin Shattock, a professor at the college, said that he and colleagues had just finished a very slow and arduous process of testing the vaccine at a low dose in the initial participants and would now expand the trial to about 300 people, including some over age 75.

Since Covid-19 infections have dropped dramatically in Britain, making it difficult to determine whether or not the vaccine works, Shattock said he and his colleagues are also looking to test their vaccine elsewhere.

"We're looking very carefully at the pandemic, at the numbers where the hotspots are and talking to collaborators that have the facilities to do these kinds of studies," he said.

Earlier this week, the world's biggest coronavirus vaccine study started in the United States, with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers getting immunized with shots created by the US National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc.

Several other vaccines made by China and by Britain's Oxford University, based on different vaccine technologies, began smaller final-stage tests in Brazil and other hard-hit countries earlier this month.

Shattock said there were numerous coronavirus vaccines now in clinical trials, and he predicted that at least some of them would prove to be effective.