Human trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine to begin in the UK

Human trials of a potential vaccine for COVID-19 will begin in the UK this Friday.

Oxford University Health Secretary, Matt Hancock says they hope that delivering this into the body will enable the immune system to fight off the real disease without needing to become infected with COVID-19.

Hancock says the plan is to test it on around 500 volunteers by mid-May and if that work proves successful then they will give it to more volunteers.

He says finding a vaccine is the top priority and adds he is delighted that they are going into human clinical trials this week.

There are now more than 2.5 million COVID-19 cases worldwide with 175,759 deaths.

The United States still has the highest number of confirmed cases with 805,980 and 44,240 deaths.

Australia has 6, 645 confirmed cases with 71 deaths while there are 1,107 cases in New Zealand and 13 deaths.

[Source:BBC]