Human trials of new COVID-19 vaccine begins in UK

London, June 25: The human trials of the new COVID-19 vaccine have begun in the United Kingdom.

Volunteers are being immunised with a new vaccine and over 3,000 will have the vaccine in the weeks to come. The trial is being led by Robin Shattock and his colleagues at the Imperial College, London.

The tests conducted on animals showed that the vaccine is safe and triggers an effective immune response. On Wednesday the BBC reported that human trials have already been started by the experts at the Oxford University.

The Imperial team is hopeful that the vaccine could be distributed in the UK and overseas from early 2021. Several traditional vaccines are based on a weakened or modified form of virus or parts of it. However the Imperial vaccine is based on a new approach that uses synthetic strands of gender code called RNS, which mimics the virus. Once injected into the muscle, RNA self-amplifies and generates copies of itself.

It instructs the body's own cells to make copies of a spike protein found on the outside of the virus. This would train the immune system to recognise and fight the virus without having to develop coronavirus.