COVID-19 vaccine "won't be expensive", developer says

COVID-19 vaccine "won't be expensive", developer says

A keenly-watched COVID-19 vaccine will be priced to allow as wide as possible access to it, if it proves successful, and will be made at huge scale to keep costs down and supply up, said the Oxford University professor co-leading its development.

Emer McCarthy reports.

An Oxford professor co-leading the development of a COVID-19 vaccine says it will be priced to be as widely accessible as possible.

Adrian Hill is the director of the Jenner Institute, which has teamed up with the drugmaker AstraZeneca to develop the vaccine.

"This is not going to be an expensive vaccine.

It's going to be a single dose vaccine.

It's going to be made for global supply and it's going to be made in many different locations.

That was always our plan." The vaccine is one of the front runners in the global race to provide protection against the new coronavirus.

Preliminary data from a trial in six monkeys found that some given a single shot of the vaccine developed antibodies against the virus within 14 days, and all developed protective antibodies within 28 days.

Hill says the data from the animal tests is "encouraging'' and the team began early-stage human trials of the vaccine last month.

The institute says that as of this week, more than 1,000 people have been dosed in the trial - with around half getting the experimental vaccine and the other half serving as a control group.

Hill has said that up to a million doses of the shot are already being manufactured and will be available by September, even before trials fully prove whether it works.