Health minister: vaccine in Q1

 From Melbourne's The Age newspaper.

Health Minister Greg Hunt says he’s becoming more hopeful and optimistic there will be a coronavirus vaccine roll out in the first quarter of next year, after trials resumed for the Oxford University vaccine.

The late-stage trials of the experimental vaccine being developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca were suspended last week after an illness in a study subject in Britain.

But a UK expert committee has concluded its investigations and recommended to that trials are safe to resume.

Mr Hunt said the suspension was “an ordinary part of a safeguards process” and it was cause for optimism as it showed the trial was being undertaken cautiously and safely.

“Wherever there is adverse event and people don’t know at the time of the event whether it’s related to the vaccine or not [there is a suspension],” Mr Hunt told Sky News on Sunday morning.

“And it’s obviously been cleared by the independent expert panel, cleared by the regulatory agency in the UK, and the vaccine trial continues.

“We have one of the strongest universities of the world in Oxford, one of the strongest medicine companies in the world in AstraZeneca, and one of the strongest regulatory agencies in terms of the British MHRA – all of which provide safeguards, process, confidence.”

He said he was optimistic that a coronavirus vaccine could be available in the first three months of next year.

A vaccine is essential for a return to normality.  To make it effective, it will need to cover 60% plus of the population, which means millions of doses in Australia and billions worldwide.  When an effective vaccine becomes available, it'll first be given to healthcare workers, then to people in old age homes, then to others who interact with the public or work in places where social distancing isn't possible, and eventually to everyone else.  So, even without the usual lags which are a part of the business cycle, a return to normality could still take many months.  And that's just in rich countries―poor countries don't have the universal health systems or money for widespread vaccination.

 

Since you're prolly sick of images of vaccines in phials, here's a picture of a Melbourne Victorian/Edwardian terrace house.  From a time when architecture tried to design beautiful buildings instead of buildings which look like prisons or public conveniences.