A sharp and sustained drop in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United Kingdom over the past few weeks is also endangering the timely development of a vaccine for this disease.
This somewhat baffling piece of news comes from the Oxford Vaccine Group from Oxford University, which is developing one of two candidate vaccines originating in the UK. Oxford is working with a global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca Plc to produce the COVID-19 vaccine.
On Sunday, the Oxford Vaccine Group revealed the disheartening news there's now only a 50% chance of successfully developing its an experimental vaccine called "ChAdOx1 nCoV-19" because the number of people in the UK infected by the COVID-19 coronavirus is falling much too quickly. SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) is the virus that causes COVID-19.
"At the moment, there's a 50% chance that we get no result at all," said Adam Hill, director at Oxford University's Jenner Institute.
Hill said the Oxford Vaccine Group is now in "a race against the virus disappearing, and against time. Hill said the number of people in the UK infected with SARS-CoV-2 was falling at a rate that means there might not be enough people to test.
Sir John Bell, an Oxford University regius professor of medicine and a colleague of Hill, said the question now facing the Oxford Vaccine Group is if it can chase the disease around the UK. Then, there's the question if they want to chase it internationally.
The Oxford Vaccine Group intends to complete human trials of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 in September. The first two people were injected with the vaccine at the end of April. More than 1,100 people in the UK are expected to take part in the trial, which is funded by the UK government, but whose progress is being threatened by a downturn in the number of coronavirus cases.
Public Health England (PHE) data shows London's coronavirus infection rate has been halving every 3.5 days over the past few weeks. It also shows the new COVD-19 epicenter for daily cases is now the northeast of England.
On May 18, London recorded no new confirmed cases for a full 24 hour period compared to 19 on May 17. The welcome decline was later ascribed to a technical hitch. On the other hand, COVID-19 cases in London are currently falling faster than anywhere else in the UK. There were 634 confirmed cases in London in the past fortnight.
PHE, however, said the case reduction in London is the first sign the capital, which was ravaged by COVID-19, is starting to see some welcome relief. Research by PHE and the University of Cambridge's MRC Biostatic Unit suggests the rate of infection has fallen to just 24 per day.
Despite this welcome news, the Department of Health warns the new statistics doesn't mean an end to the pandemic is anywhere in sight.
