Coronavirus vaccine update | Australian candidate shows promise; WHO says fair distribution of vaccine big challenge

From phase II of the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine starting in Pune to World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist saying that a 'fair distribution' of a vaccine will be a big challenge, here are all the latest updates on the coronavirus vaccine and its candidates:

Two volunteers were administered a COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford as part of its phase II trials at Bharti Vidyapeeth's Medical College and Hospital in Pune.

Pune-based Serum Institute of India has partnered with AstraZeneca to manufacture the vaccine, named Covishield.

"Five volunteers were tested for RT-PCR and antibodies, out of which reports of three showed they have anti-bodies, hence the vaccine was administered to two," Medical Director of Bharti Vidyapeeth's Medical Hospital said.

Distributing COVID-19 vaccine around the world fairly without letting the rich countries corner the limited doses is going to be a big challenge, the WHO's Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said on August 26.

On vaccine development for the novel coronavirus, she said: "By early 2021, we should have some good news."

Then, there is the big challenge of being able to scale, distribute and allocate fairly around the world without letting the rich countries corner the limited doses, Swaminathan said.

A potential COVID-19 vaccine developed in Australia has showed positive results in human clinical trials. The vaccine candidate has shown zero side effects in human trials so far and has shown promising results when tried on animals.

In July, the University of Queensland (UQ) and Australian biotech giant CSL began the trial with injecting 120 Brisbane volunteers with the potential shot against the novel coronavirus infection, DailyMail reported.

After the first trial doses were administered on animals, project co-leader Associate Professor Keith Chappell said it was successful.

The University of Cambridge on August 26 confirmed plans to begin trials of a potential new vaccine not only against COVID-19 but all coronaviruses that may spill over from animals to humans in the future.

The new vaccine candidate, DIOS-CoVax2, uses banks of genetic sequences of all known coronaviruses, including those from bats, believed to be the natural hosts of many relatives of human coronaviruses.