Oxford University has maintained that the COVID-19 vaccine trial has only a 50 per cent chance of success as the novel virus is receding in Britain. The professor co-leading the development of the vaccine told the Telegraph newspaper.

Adrian Hill, director of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, who has collaborated with drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc to develop the vaccine against coronavirus, said that an upcoming trial, involving 10,000 volunteers, threatened to return “no result” due to low transmission of Covid-19 in the community.

“It’s a race against the virus disappearing, and against time”, Hill told the British newspaper. “At the moment, there’s a 50% chance that we get no result at all.”

The experimental vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is one of the front-runners in the global race to provide protection against the new coronavirus causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

The phase I trial in healthy adult volunteers began in April by Hill’s team. More than 1,000 immunizations have been completed and follow-up is currently ongoing. The next study has enrolled up to 10,260 adults and children and will involve a number of partner institutions across the country, as per the Oxford’s official website.

The world has so far recorded more than 55 lakh cases of the coronavirus, with over 3 lakh deaths.

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