The first ready-to-use vaccine to be tested on humans could have its mass human trials in Kenya, even earlier than in Europe.
This is the hypothesis of the British team of scientists from Oxford, which also includes an Italian researcher, taken up yesterday by an article published on the British BBC website.
In fact, the first tests of the vaccine for Covid-19 developed in England were already conducted last Thursday on two volunteers and another 800 have already been recruited to be injected with two vaccines: half of them will receive the one studied to cope with Covid-19, the other 400 a vaccine that protects against meningitis but not against Coronavirus. Patients will not be told which vaccine will be injected.
"The Oxford team is also considering a trial of the vaccine in Africa, possibly in Kenya, where transmission rates are growing from a lower base - says doctor Fergus Walsh in the BBC interview - in thirty years we have already successfully developed the vaccine against the EBRD, which is a Coronavirus, in addition to having worked on other vaccines such as the one for malaria, which is under development".
According to the BBC, the chosen country, if they will not achieve rapid and timely results in the UK, should be Kenya, where the Coronavirus epidemic still has numbers that are not worrying but could be on the rise.
"This virus is now known - Walsh explains again - this vaccine has been studied to produce a strong antibody response but this is not necessarily equivalent to protection, we will need many vaccines, there are dozens in development.
From the Kenyan side it is not confirmed or denied, but the opening is there.
The Director General of Health Patrick Amoth has made known that he has not yet had an interview with the United Kingdom, but that he has heard about this possibility from the media, declaring himself a possibility, but referring to a possible decision that will have to be taken absolutely in agreement with the World Health Organization and not through an agreement between two individual countries.