UK first to run final stage trials of Janssen Covid vaccine

Trial of shot from Johnson & Johnson subsidiary will test safety and effectiveness

A laboratory analyst is at work at the headquarters of the Janssen pharmaceutical company, which is recruiting for a third phase trial of a potential covid vaccine. AFP

Six thousand volunteers in the UK are to take part in a trial of a potential Covid vaccine.

Britain will be the first country to run final stage trials of an experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed by the pharmaceutical company Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Scientists are starting recruitment on Monday for the 12-month trial.

Dr Saul Faust, who is helping to lead the study, said the research will start first in Britain but the aim is to recruit 30,000 people in six countries.

The shot uses a harmless cold virus to deliver the spike protein of the coronavirus into the body, which scientists hope will prompt an immune response.

Dr Faust said the news from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech last week that their vaccine appears to be 90 per cent effective according to preliminary data was a welcome boost for their research.

“It’s fantastic news that vaccines aimed at the spike protein can prevent coronavirus disease,” said Dr Faust, a professor of paediatric immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Southampton.

“We just don’t know how each of these vaccines is going to behave and which are going to generate the better short and long-term immunity,” he said.

Dr Faust said half of the people in the new UK study will be given a placebo vaccine of saline.

Researchers are hoping to recruit people from groups disproportionately affected by Covid-19, including older people and those from ethnic minorities, he said.

The Janssen vaccine is one of six experimental coronavirus vaccines that Britain has ordered as part of a planned 350-million-dose stockpile.

Two other potential coronavirus vaccines are in clinical trials in the country, alongside US biotech company Novavax and University of Oxford/AstraZeneca.

Meanwhile, Britain expects to start rolling out the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine just before Christmas if it is declared safe and effective, health minister Matt Hancock said on Monday.

"We're working very closely with the company," he said. "We'll be ready to roll it out as soon as it comes, we'll be ready from the first of December ... but more likely is that we may be able to start rolling it out before Christmas."

Asked by the BBC how many vaccines Britain would need, he said it depended on how effective they were at preventing transmission.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in self-isolation after coming into contact with someone who had the disease. He was treated in a hospital intensive care unit earlier this year when he caught Covid-19.