1 million doses of potential COVID-19 vaccine by U.K. scientists to be made before proof it works

A million doses of a potentialCOVID-19 vaccine being developed by British scientists arealready being manufactured and will be available by September,even before trials prove whether the shot is effective, the teamsaid on Friday.

The Oxford University team's experimental product, called"ChAdOx1 nCoV-19," is a type known as a recombinant viral vectorvaccine, and is one of at least 70 potential COVID-19 candidateshots under development by biotech and research teams around theworld.

At least five of those are in preliminary testing in people.

The Oxford scientists said Friday they were recruitingvolunteers for early stage Phase 1 human trials of theirshot, and large-scale production capacity was being put in place"at risk." This means the shots will be produced in largenumbers at risk of being useless if trials show they do notwork.

"We have started at risk manufacturing of this vaccine notjust on a smallish scale ... but with a network of manufacturersin as many as seven different places around the world," AdrianHill, a professor and director of the Jenner Institute at OxfordUniversity, told reporters in an online briefing.

"The aim is to have at least a million doses by around aboutSeptember, when we also hope to have efficacy [trial]results."

He said three of the manufacturing partners were in Britain,two in Europe, one in India and one in China.

The scientists said initial manufacturing costs would be in the"tens of millions" of pounds and acknowledged the investmentrisk of pressing ahead with production before verification.

They did not give details of their financing.

Vaccine trials to begin within weeks

By 11:00 a.m. ET Friday, more than 2.18million people hadbeen reported to beinfected by the novel coronavirus globally, according to a Johns Hopkins tally. There have been nearly 150,000 deaths.

Hill's team said itplans to start safety and thenmid-stage efficacy trials of the potential COVID-19 vaccine inadults aged between 18 and 55 within weeks.

They then plan to expand the trial group to older ageslater, and hope to run a final phase trial with around 5,000volunteers in the late summer.

Hill and his co-researchersacknowledged that many other research teams worldwidewere also working on potential vaccines, with only a proportionlikely to be fully successful.

Asked when the shot if proven to work might be able tobe made widely available to the public, Hill said the best-casescenario would be for regulators to grant it "emergency useapproval." That could be achieved within six weeksbeyond the point at which data shows whether it is effective.

That, he said, could mean around six weeks from September,when the team hopes to have positive trial data.