LONDON: University of Oxford scientists expect to report results from the late-stage trials of their COVID-19 vaccine by Christmas, a key researcher said Thursday as he discussed the team’s latest findings.
Dr. Andrew Pollard, an expert in pediatric infection and immunity at Oxford, said research was slowed by low infection rates over the summer, but the Phase III trials are now accumulating the data needed to report results as a renewed surge of the pandemic hits countries around the world. Oxford is developing its vaccine in conjunction with the drugmaker AstraZeneca.
“I think we’re getting close, and it’s definitely going to be before Christmas based on the progress,” Pollard said in an interview with the BBC.
Pollard discussed progress in the late-stage trials as Oxford released a study based on earlier research that found the vaccine was well tolerated and produced a strong immune response in people over 70. This is important because vaccines often don’t work as well in older people, Pollard said.
“The reason that we’re so delighted is the we’re seeing the immune responses look exactly the same, even in those who are over 70 years of age,” Pollard said.
The findings were based on a so-called phase II trial of 560 people, including 240 over the age of 70. The results of the peer-reviewed study were published Thursday in the Lancet, an international medical journal.
Phase II vaccine trials provide important preliminary data but don’t prove whether they ultimately prevent people from getting sick. Oxford and AstraZeneca are waiting for the results of phase III trials on thousands of people around the world to show whether their vaccine is safe and effective.
Two other drugmakers, Pfizer and Moderna, this week reported preliminary results from late-stage trials showing that their COVID-19 vaccines were almost 95% effective.
Pollard said there is no competition between the various research teams, because several vaccines will be needed to bring the global pandemic under control and allow life to return to normal.
Despite recent progress, Pollard said the world is still in the early stages of the effort to protect people against COVID-19. Even after vaccines are approved by regulators, drugmakers and public health officials still face the task of producing billions of doses and administering them to people around the world, he said.
Pollard, an amateur mountaineer, compared the task to the work involved in climbing a mountain.
“I think we’re still at the bottom of that mountain in some ways,” he said. “We’ve done the route into the bottom of the mountain, the long trek to get to the start. Now we’ve got to get the data about the vaccines in front of regulators for them to scrutinize it and approve the first vaccines. And then we’ve got that huge effort to climb up to the top where we’ve got a vast majority of those who are at risk vaccinated.”
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Oxford scientists expect COVID-19 vaccine data by Christmas
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Oxford scientists expect COVID-19 vaccine data by Christmas
- Oxford is developing its vaccine in conjunction with the drugmaker AstraZeneca
- Two other drugmakers, Pfizer and Moderna, this week reported preliminary results from late-stage trials showing that their COVID-19 vaccines were almost 95% effective
Community conflict creeps close to DR Congo capital
KINSHASA: Tensions over land between two communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is gradually morphing into an armed conflict that has reached the outskirts of the capital, Kinshasa.
It started with a dispute between tenant farmers and landowners, spread to involve spiritual rituals and then led to actual fightin1g with guns and machetes.
The conflict in the fertile Bateke plateau region, about 70 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of the DRC capital has been smoldering for nearly four years and has already claimed several thousand lives.
Little about it reaches the outside world, overshadowed as it is by the violence raging in the east of the vast central African country since the resurgence in late 2021 of anti-government armed group M23.
On one side are the Teke, whose members consider themselves to be the original inhabitants and owners of the villages located along a 200-kilometer stretch of the Congo river.
On the other side are the members of the Yaka community, farmers who settled there after the Teke.
In 2022, conflict broke out between the two groups when the Yaka rejected an attempt by Teke chiefs to raise the fee they charged for farming the land.
Tensions then escalated into “widespread violence,” according to Human Rights Watch.
- ‘Divine intervention’ -
Several thousand Mobondo militiamen, presented as members of the Yaka community, are thought to be involved in killings that continue in parts of Mai-Ndombe province, just northeast of the capital, despite army deployments in the region.
They take their name from “fetishes that protect against bullets,” engage in spiritual rituals and, according to survivors, believe themselves to be invulnerable.
They have been accused of several attacks in recent months, including one in November where 27 villagers were killed in the Mai-Ndombe village of Nkana, 75 kilometers from Kinshasa.
In early January, a 37-year-old Belgian-Congolese man was hacked to death by machete on his farm in Mbakana, just east of the capital.
His wife and two children escaped the attack, which has been blamed on suspected Mobondo fighters.
Two years earlier, university lecturer Jonathan Kwebe, eluded an attack in Mai-Ndombe. It was thanks to “divine intervention,” he told AFP.
He was on a bus with around 40 other passengers, including women and children, when they were ambushed on the road to the western town of Bandundu by Mobondo militias.
“They were armed with machetes, arrows and hunting rifles. They made us get off the bus and took us to their village. Then they said they’d behead everyone who was Teke,” Kwebe recalled.
Luckily, they were rescued at dawn by Congolese soldiers who had launched a raid against Mobondo fighters in Bandundu.
They fled on another bus along a road “littered with corpses,” the teacher recalled.
- Creeping closer to Kinshasa -
Currently, the Mobondo are active in all three provinces neighboring Kinshasa to the east.
Witnesses say violence has spread from village to village where the Yaka and Teke had previously coexisted peacefully.
The Mobondo have now extended their presence to the outskirts of the capital and even encroached on parts of Central Kongo, on the west side of Kinshasa, according to a report in November by the Danish Institute for International Studies.
The Bateke plateau, northeast of Kinshasa, is one of the capital’s main sources of farm produce — one reason why the Congolese authorities have made several bids to stem the spiral of violence.
But attempts to get the Yaka and Teke to negotiate have failed.
And a government campaign launched in January to encourage the Mobondo to surrender has so far resulted in the demobilization of only around 100 fighters, according to Deputy Defense Minister Eliezer Thambwe.
In February, as the threat drew closer to the capital, former deputy prime minister Peter Kazadi accused certain traditional chiefs of seeking to barter peace for cash.
It is hard to assess the toll from this poorly documented conflict.
In a report published in December, the DRC’s Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission calculated that more than 5,000 people had been killed and more than 280,000 displaced since the conflict began.
It started with a dispute between tenant farmers and landowners, spread to involve spiritual rituals and then led to actual fightin1g with guns and machetes.
The conflict in the fertile Bateke plateau region, about 70 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of the DRC capital has been smoldering for nearly four years and has already claimed several thousand lives.
Little about it reaches the outside world, overshadowed as it is by the violence raging in the east of the vast central African country since the resurgence in late 2021 of anti-government armed group M23.
On one side are the Teke, whose members consider themselves to be the original inhabitants and owners of the villages located along a 200-kilometer stretch of the Congo river.
On the other side are the members of the Yaka community, farmers who settled there after the Teke.
In 2022, conflict broke out between the two groups when the Yaka rejected an attempt by Teke chiefs to raise the fee they charged for farming the land.
Tensions then escalated into “widespread violence,” according to Human Rights Watch.
- ‘Divine intervention’ -
Several thousand Mobondo militiamen, presented as members of the Yaka community, are thought to be involved in killings that continue in parts of Mai-Ndombe province, just northeast of the capital, despite army deployments in the region.
They take their name from “fetishes that protect against bullets,” engage in spiritual rituals and, according to survivors, believe themselves to be invulnerable.
They have been accused of several attacks in recent months, including one in November where 27 villagers were killed in the Mai-Ndombe village of Nkana, 75 kilometers from Kinshasa.
In early January, a 37-year-old Belgian-Congolese man was hacked to death by machete on his farm in Mbakana, just east of the capital.
His wife and two children escaped the attack, which has been blamed on suspected Mobondo fighters.
Two years earlier, university lecturer Jonathan Kwebe, eluded an attack in Mai-Ndombe. It was thanks to “divine intervention,” he told AFP.
He was on a bus with around 40 other passengers, including women and children, when they were ambushed on the road to the western town of Bandundu by Mobondo militias.
“They were armed with machetes, arrows and hunting rifles. They made us get off the bus and took us to their village. Then they said they’d behead everyone who was Teke,” Kwebe recalled.
Luckily, they were rescued at dawn by Congolese soldiers who had launched a raid against Mobondo fighters in Bandundu.
They fled on another bus along a road “littered with corpses,” the teacher recalled.
- Creeping closer to Kinshasa -
Currently, the Mobondo are active in all three provinces neighboring Kinshasa to the east.
Witnesses say violence has spread from village to village where the Yaka and Teke had previously coexisted peacefully.
The Mobondo have now extended their presence to the outskirts of the capital and even encroached on parts of Central Kongo, on the west side of Kinshasa, according to a report in November by the Danish Institute for International Studies.
The Bateke plateau, northeast of Kinshasa, is one of the capital’s main sources of farm produce — one reason why the Congolese authorities have made several bids to stem the spiral of violence.
But attempts to get the Yaka and Teke to negotiate have failed.
And a government campaign launched in January to encourage the Mobondo to surrender has so far resulted in the demobilization of only around 100 fighters, according to Deputy Defense Minister Eliezer Thambwe.
In February, as the threat drew closer to the capital, former deputy prime minister Peter Kazadi accused certain traditional chiefs of seeking to barter peace for cash.
It is hard to assess the toll from this poorly documented conflict.
In a report published in December, the DRC’s Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission calculated that more than 5,000 people had been killed and more than 280,000 displaced since the conflict began.
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