UK scientists enrol volunteers for coronavirus vaccine trial

Oxford team to recruit up to 510 healthy adults without Covid-19 in race to stop further spread

Oxford scientists are enrolling the first volunteers to test a UK coronavirus vaccine, in a dramatic acceleration of the typical pace of drug development.

The trial will recruit up to 510 healthy adults, aged 18 to 55, to test the vaccine called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. The participants will not receive the vaccine for some weeks.

While screening of participants takes place, the vaccine will continue to be assessed in animal trials at the Public Health England (PHE) laboratory at Porton Down, near Salisbury and, simultaneously, be manufactured to clinical grade standard at a University of Oxford facility.

Prof Adrian Hill, the director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, said: “Vaccines are being designed from scratch and progressed at an unprecedented rate. The upcoming trial will be critical for assessing the feasibility of vaccination against Covid-19 and could lead to early deployment.”

The UK effort to produce a vaccine quickly is one of many happening around the world. Photograph: Pedro Vilela/Getty Images

The Oxford team previously worked on a rapid vaccine response during the Ebola outbreak in west Africa in 2014. Hill said coronavirus had posed an “even greater challenge”.

The team needs people without Covid-19 and is likely to exclude anyone on medication and women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or intending to become pregnant during the study. Some will be injected with the vaccine and others with a control injection for comparison. It is expected to be months before scientists know whether the vaccine is effective, as larger trials will be needed and participants’ immune response will need to be monitored.

The team started work on 10 January, the same day China reported details of the novel coronavirus to the World Health Organization. Since then, it has progressed rapidly from candidate vaccine to animal testing to human trials.

Under normal circumstances, trials in humans would not begin until animal experiments had been completed. But because similar vaccines have worked safely in trials for other diseases, and due to the overwhelming challenges posed by the pandemic, the work has been accelerated. The trial has been approved by UK regulators and ethical reviewers.

Prof Stephen Evans, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “There are risks that some aspects of pre-human testing have been reduced or omitted, but the benefits of getting the vaccine as quickly as possible could outweigh such potential theoretical risks.”

The UK’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, suggested this month that 12-18 months was a realistic timeframe for a vaccine to be available, but the Oxford team is aiming for earlier than this.

The vaccine is an intramuscular injection that uses a harmless, non-replicating virus to carry RNA (genetic instructions) from the coronavirus into the body’s cells.

Once inside, the body’s cells absorb the instructions and start churning out copies of the “spike protein” on the surface of the virus. In theory, these proteins are released into the body and should trigger the immune system without causing any illness.

Previous studies suggest the vaccine should work with only a single dose. Vaccines that operate the same way have been used safely in thousands of people, aged from one week to 90 years, for diseases ranging from malaria and TB to Mers, another coronavirus, and Ebola. None is in any routine immunisation programme, but they have been used previously in the UK.

In parallel with the trial, production of the vaccine is being increased ready for larger trials, and, if these are successful, rapid deployment, especially for NHS workers, elderly people, and those with underlying health conditions.

The UK effort is one of several around the world, including a trial by the US company Moderna, which gave the first dose to a participant last week.

(Source: The Guardian)

Oxford University promises 25% of places to disadvantaged

University of Oxford is promising a "sea-change" in admissions, with plans for a quarter of students to come from disadvantaged backgrounds by 2023.

The university wants to tackle accusations that it is socially exclusive.

Oxford will soon announce that 60.5% of its most recent intake are from state schools - the highest since the 1970s.

But vice-chancellor Louise Richardson says she wants to "accelerate the pace at which we are diversifying".

What's the problem they are trying to solve?
Oxford, along with other top universities, has faced claims of perpetuating privilege - with too many privately-educated students and not enough from poorer backgrounds.

The Sutton Trust social mobility charity showed recently that Oxford and Cambridge recruit more students from eight, mostly-private schools than almost 3,000 other UK state schools put together.

Labour MP David Lammy has lambasted the university for admitting too few black students.

The university wants to send a strong signal that it remains very competitive to get a place - but that should be about ability rather than background.

Prof Richardson says she wants to ensure that "every academically exceptional student in the country knows that they have a fair chance of a place at Oxford".

She is being supported by the head of the Sutton Trust, Sir Peter Lampl, who described the scale of Oxford's target as "really impressive".

How will they get more places for disadvantaged applicants?
At present about 15% of Oxford's undergraduate students are from deprived areas - and the university wants to increase this significantly to 25% over the next four years.

An access scheme will have places for 200 high-achieving disadvantaged students each year.

These will be students, identified during the application process, who will be offered a place and then given extra support before beginning their degree courses.

Another 50 places will be available for a foundation year, aimed at developing students who show high academic potential, but whose education might have been disrupted or who had to overcome personal disadvantage.

Those who successfully complete the foundation year will go on to begin undergraduate courses.

What counts as disadvantaged?
It is not by income thresholds or ethnicity, but is mainly based on a socio-economic profile of where people live.

This uses two postcode-based systems, called Polar and Acorn, which measure local levels of deprivation or affluence.

Louise Richardson says she wants a "sea change" in the approach to admissions

The particular focus of Polar is the level of entry to university from people living in that area.

There have been critics of Polar - including Universities Minister Chris Skidmore, who wants to find a better way of showing disadvantage.

For instance, a very poor area with relatively high levels of university entry, such as in some parts of London, might not appear to be disadvantaged.

But the university says it will also consider some individual markers of hardship - such as spending time in care or eligibility for free school meals.

Such approaches depend on helping people who have already tried for a place at Oxford.

Some of the hardest-to-reach groups, such as white, working-class boys, might have not even considered applying.

Is this another squeezed middle?
If 25% of places are to be targeted at applicants from poorer areas - and in recent years, about 40% of places have gone to pupils from private schools - then that leaves 35% for everyone else.

That would be the remaining slice of places for all those state school pupils who do not live in the most deprived areas - which is to say, state-educated families in the middle.

Such an analysis is rejected by Oxford - with the university saying there is no reason to assume that so many places will go to private school pupils in the future.

The next round of entry figures, covering 2018, will show 60.5% of students from state schools, more than about 58% in the two previous years, and the highest in these records going back more than 40 years.

But it is worth noting that all these figures are about the proportion of UK undergraduates - and they do not include the increase in overseas applicants getting places.

There might be an extra 250 places for deprived youngsters - but on current trends, there will be more than 700 overseas students.

Will this stop accusations of snobbery and elitism?
Very unlikely. As the competition for places at top universities has become more intense, so too has the public scrutiny.

Such famous universities are seen not only in terms of academic excellence, but as markers of social status and a passport to top professions.

So there will be more questions about what "fair" entry means - and arguments over representative intakes and "social engineering".

There are fewer UK students at Oxford and Cambridge than a decade ago, with more places for overseas students

Chris Millward, the Office for Students' director for fair access, says there will be more "pressure" on universities over access for disadvantaged students.

But there are concerns from the private school sector about not making unfair assumptions.

"Many pupils in state schools come from high-income homes and many pupils attending independent schools receive means-tested bursaries," said Julie Robinson, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council.

Luke Heselwood of the Reform think tank said the places for poorer applicants were a "drop in the ocean when 40% of Oxford students are from a private school, compared to 7% in the country".

He said that Oxford should be targeting high achieving disadvantaged students who might not even apply to a top university.

Labour's shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said "this is an important step in the right direction" - and that "for too long our top universities have been a closed club".

Mr Skidmore welcomed the announcement, saying such universities should be open to everyone who "has the potential".

(Source: BBC)

Oxford English Dictionary adds new entries: chuddies, jibbons and fantoosh

An Indian English word for underpants joins a host of Scottish insults after the dictionary crowdsourced regional terms

English speakers from around the world have flocked to help the Oxford English Dictionary expand its coverage of regional vocabulary, with a new update including suggestions such as jibbons, chuddies and sitooterie.

The dictionary launched its Words Where You Are appeal to the public last year to mark the 90th anniversary of the completion of its first edition. The regional vocabulary suggestions which have poured in from readers ever since span the globe, from the Welsh English term for spring onions, “jibbons”, to the name for the regional dialect heard in New Orleans, “Yat”, which is derived from the greeting: “Where y’at?”

The public appeal also yielded a host of Scots terms, from “bidie-in”, which the OED defines as “a person who lives with his or her partner in a non-marital relationship”, and which it says was first recorded in 1916, to “bigsie”. Meaning “having an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance”, bigsie’s first recorded use was in 1881, when the Aberdeen Weekly Journal told the story of a tailor who was known locally as a “gey bigsie kin’ o’ bodie”. The Scottish word “fantoosh” has a similar meaning – dating from the 1920s, it is used to describe anything showy or flashy, often disparagingly. The OED points to a 1936 article in Scots Magazine: “Ony sensible body wad be only too pleased if I washed their windows for naething, but jist because ye think yersel’ fantoosh, I’m no’ guid enough.”

The word “sitooterie” is another Scottish term to make the cut in the OED’s latest update, with editors Jane Johnson and Kate Wild saying that there is “something just generally pleasing about the word”. Meaning “a place in which to sit out”, it dates to at least the 1920s.

 Chuddies … the Indian English term joins the OED. Photograph: Todd Terje PR

A host of Scottish insults were also submitted by members of the public, from “bam”, defined as a foolish, annoying, or obnoxious person, as in the pronunciation from Aberdeen: “Awa ye ham, Yer mither’s a bam”, to “geggie”. Meaning mouth, geggie is frequently used in “shut your geggie”, said the OED, which found the earliest evidence of its use in William Miller’s 1985 short story Andy’s Trial: “‘Good fur you, wee Andy!’ shouted his grandmother. The judge looked over his specs. ‘Mah dear wumman,’ he said patiently, ‘will ye kindly shut yer geggie?’”

The OED’s Indian English vocabulary is updated with the phrase “kiss my chuddies”, or underpants, used as a catchphrase by Sanjeev Bhaskar in Goodness Gracious Me, while South African English in the dictionary is expanded with the inclusion of “dof”, a borrowing from Afrikaans meaning “stupid, ill-informed or clueless”, and “gramadoelas”, “an etymologically mysterious word for a remote rural region, especially one regarded as unsophisticated or uncultured”.

The OED’s Jonathan Dent also pointed to the expansion of the dictionary’s definition for the verb “get”, following the appeal, with the “humorously euphemistic way of referring to the ‘withdrawal method’ of contraception”, “to get off at Edge Hill”, now featuring in the dictionary.

“This jokey linguistic meme uses the idea of disembarking – a sexually suggestive ‘getting off’ – at the last stop before the terminus of a railway line,” said Dent. “The appropriately precipitous sounding Edge Hill is the penultimate station on the only line into Liverpool Lime Street, but there are multiple local variations in British and English – getting off at Gateshead rather than Newcastle, Haymarket rather than Edinburgh Waverley, and so on. Ultimately, though, the idea seems to be Australian in origin: in our earliest evidence, entered in Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang in 1967, the passenger steps off the train (so to speak) at Redfern, a suburb of Sydney.”

The OED is continuing its search for regional vocabulary, Dent continued, and will include “many more words” in future updates.

(Source: The Guardian)