Coronavirus Vaccine Update: UK, Germany Among Countries Leading The Race To Cure COVID-19

Given how the COVID-19 outbreak has spread across the globe, it’s unsurprising to note how world leaders are now looking at human trials for vaccines in a desperate bid to mitigate the effects and further spread of the pandemic.

On Wednesday, April 22, Germany joined the ranks of those countries who’ve approved the COVID-19 vaccine trials in humans.

The Paul Ehrlich Institute, German's federal institutes for vaccines, released a statement about going ahead to green-light authorized clinical human trials for BNT162—a vaccine, which is the result of a collaboration between the scientists of BioNTech, a local firm, and Pfizer a U.S. pharma company. Germany currently stands at 148,000 cases and 5,117 COVID-19 related deaths.

The statement read: "Considering the serious consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is a significant step toward developing an efficacious and safe COVID-19 vaccine available in Germany and making it available worldwide as soon as possible.” As per the information disclosed by the institute, the first few rounds of the clinical trials will be conducted on a group of healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 55. Additional tests are likely to be conducted based upon the success of the first stage of human trials. A report suggested that the trials will find takers in the U.S as well, provided a regulatory approval for the testing comes through.

Reports about this development come shortly after the United Kingdom recently approved the trials. U.K.’s health secretary Matt Hancock recently announced the start of the trials on Thursday, of a vaccine developed by Oxford University. Speculations are rife that the country also has another vaccine in the offing—developed by Imperial College, and things are slated to get rolling by June.

Approximately 500 volunteers are likely to sign up for the initiative by mid-May, and the British government is reportedly pledging £20m into the research.

Apart from the U.K. and Germany, China also happens to have taken a keen interest in human trials for two of its vaccines that were approved earlier this month.