Oxford

The World Health Organization has granted approval for Oxford/AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine. The vaccine is easier to store and cheaper than its competitors and will be distributed mainly to low- and middle-income countries.

An Oxford released a study shows that higher vaccine efficacy can be achieved with a longer interval between the first and second dose and that a single vaccine dose is highly effective in the first 90 days. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, further showed that the AstraZeneca vaccine can cut transmission of the virus by two-thirds and prevented severe disease.

“That reduction in transmission, as well as the fact there is no hospitalizations, the combination of that is very good news. And it categorically supports the strategy we’ve been taking on having a 12-week gap between the doses,” Hancock told Sky News on Wednesday.

The UK is set to start administering the new Covid-19 vaccine from Oxford University and the AstraZeneca group on Monday, stating that the "NHS will be the first health service in the world to provide this life-saving vaccine."

The vaccine will initially be delivered in a small number of hospitals, but will be widely distributed to hundreds of vaccination centers later this week.

"Project Northmoor" is aiming to raise $6.1 million via crowdfunding to purchase J.R.R. Tolkien's home in Oxford, England, which soon will be on the market and transform it into a literary center in his honor. The campaign is led by author Julia Golding and will start on December 2.

Various actors, who starred in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbits, have joined a fellowship to save 20 Northmoor Road, including Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman and John Rhys-Davies.

"With the support of volunteers in the U.S., Golding has seized on this once-in-a-generation opportunity and negotiated a 3-month fundraising window with the current owner," Project Northmoor's statement reads.

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced Monday that its Covid-19 vaccine has shown an average efficacy of 70% in large-scale trials. When given as a half dose followed by a full dose a month later, it showed 90% efficacy and with two full doses given a month apart, it showed 62% efficacy.

"What we've always tried to do with a vaccine is fool the immune system into thinking that there's a dangerous infection there that it needs to respond to -- but doing it in a very safe way. So we get the immune response and we get the immune memory ... waiting and ready if the pathogen itself is then encountered," so Professor Andrew Pollard, the trial's lead investigator at Oxford.

Europe’s Inclusive Vaccines Alliance (IVA), a group formed by the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy, concluded a contract with AstraZeneca to provide 400 million doses of a possible vaccine developed by the University of Oxford. If the trial results convince regulators the vaccine is safe and effective, deliveries are expected to start by the end of 2020.

The company reached similar agreements with the United Kingdom and with the United States.