“We could really feel the pressure,” said Francesco Calvaruso, the production manager of Advent, which needed two months to grow, filter and purify a trial vaccine known as AZD1222. Oxford manufactured its own vaccine for use in the earliest small trial known as Phase 1. Last week, Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands struck a deal for 400 million doses of the experimental Oxford vaccine, which, if approved by regulators, would be produced by the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca. But just 11 candidate vaccines, according to the World Health Organization, have reached the stage of clinical testing. “There is quite a strong probability that the vaccine will work,” said Walter Ricciardi, the World Health Organization’s Italian government adviser.

Source: Washington Post June 20, 2020 12:09 UTC